Meet Kerrie
Kerrie Coxell is the Founder and Director of C-Suite Insurance Academy, an Australian business focused on improving insurance literacy among executives, directors and senior business leaders. After more than 36 years across broking, underwriting, underwriting management and claims loss adjusting, she now draws on that experience to help business leaders better understand the insurance decisions they are responsible for.
A Career That Slowly Revealed Its Purpose
For Kerrie, insurance was not simply a career she entered and stayed in for more than three decades. It became a way of understanding businesses, people, risk and responsibility from several different perspectives.
Her experience across broking, underwriting and loss adjusting gave her a different view of the corporate and commercial insurance landscape. She came to understand not only how policies were placed, but also how decisions made at the beginning of the process could affect what happened when a business eventually needed to make a claim.
Helping people better understand insurance was a thread running through all of those experiences.
As a broker, Kerrie enjoyed helping clients understand what they were actually buying. The demands of the role, however, often left little time for the deeper conversations she felt were necessary. Insurance could be complicated, and clients did not always have the opportunity to fully explore the meaning of their coverage.
Kerrie is also the first to admit that her own understanding developed over time. As a very young broker, she once confidently told a takeaway shop owner that his Products Liability insurance covered anything that happened to the products he sold.
“It doesn’t. I was young, enthusiastic and apparently quite confident about something I didn’t yet understand,” she laughs. “Whether we weren’t trained particularly well in those days or I was simply too young to take it all in, I’ve never forgotten it.”
Experiences like that reinforced something she now feels strongly about: you cannot properly explain insurance to someone else unless you genuinely understand it yourself.
Later, as an underwriter, she found a similar sense of purpose in helping brokers understand the policies they were selling. She enjoyed explaining the reasoning behind different covers and helping others develop a clearer understanding of the decisions they were making.
Over time, Kerrie realised that building insurance literacy was the part of her work she found most meaningful.
That realisation would eventually shape the next chapter of her professional life.
The Space Between Buying Insurance and Understanding It
The idea for C-Suite Insurance Academy emerged during a period when Kerrie had stepped away from full-time corporate work. She had made a lifestyle change and was also enjoying becoming a grandmother. With more space to think about the future, she began considering what might challenge her next.
“I was supposed to be taking a step back,” Kerrie says. “Apparently I’m not particularly good at that.”
That period of reflection brought an issue into sharper focus.
Businesses were increasingly dealing with complex insurance programs, yet the executives and directors ultimately responsible for approving those programs did not always have the understanding they needed to engage with them confidently.
The gap was not necessarily about a lack of intelligence or interest. Business leaders have responsibilities across finance, people, operations, strategy and governance. They are not expected to become insurance specialists. But they do need enough knowledge to understand the decisions in front of them, identify areas that deserve closer attention and have meaningful conversations with their brokers.
Kerrie also believes the insurance industry has not always been particularly good at articulating its own value. Much of the conversation with businesses naturally happens around renewal — premiums, terms, exclusions and placement — which can make insurance feel like an annual transaction rather than one of the mechanisms that protects an organisation’s people, assets, revenue and ability to recover when something goes wrong.
For Kerrie, the industry understands what insurance does, but has not always been as effective at helping the people who buy it understand why it matters.
That is not a criticism of the industry or the brokers who serve businesses well. Kerrie remains highly supportive of good insurance professionals and the important role they play. Her aim is to help business leaders engage with their advisers more confidently, ask better questions and have more informed conversations.
C-Suite Insurance Academy is deliberately independent. It is not sponsored or paid for by a broker or insurer, and there is no insurance product being sold as part of the Masterclass. Kerrie wanted to create an environment where executives could improve their understanding without a product or sales conversation sitting behind it.
Kerrie could see that her own career had given her an unusual perspective. She had seen insurance from several sides of the table. She understood the role of the broker, the thinking of the underwriter and the reality of claims.
More importantly, she understood why the subject mattered.
Insurance can sometimes feel distant when it is discussed only in terms of policies, premiums, limits and exclusions. Kerrie’s experience had taught her that behind every policy is something much more tangible. There is a business, a team, a livelihood, an investment and often years of work that people have poured into building something.
When Insurance Became Personal
One of the most significant realisations in Kerrie’s career came when she understood the real consequences attached to the work she was doing.
Insurance exists for moments when something has gone wrong. A fire, accident, legal dispute, natural disaster or unexpected loss can turn a business upside down. In those moments, the quality of decisions made long before the event can become extremely important.
Kerrie came to recognise that her work could genuinely affect the outcome for another person.
“If I did my job well, I could make a genuine difference when something went wrong.”
That sense of responsibility remains central to how she approaches insurance.
For Kerrie, better insurance literacy is not about turning business leaders into technical insurance professionals. It is about giving them enough knowledge to recognise what deserves attention.
A question asked before a policy is approved can sometimes be more valuable than a question asked after a loss has occurred.
That perspective gives her work at C-Suite Insurance Academy a practical purpose. She is not trying to make insurance more complicated. She is trying to make it easier for the people responsible for it to engage with it confidently and thoughtfully.
Her approach has also been shaped by a lifetime of relationships within the industry. Kerrie is proud of the professional connections she has built over the years, including relationships with people she first worked with early in her career. In an industry where trust matters deeply, she believes reputation is something built slowly through consistency, honesty and the way people are treated.
The Resilience Built Outside the Office
Some of Kerrie’s strongest professional qualities were developed far away from boardrooms and insurance offices.
Her husband spent his military career serving while they raised their family, and the demands of military life meant frequent moves and periods of separation. Kerrie was raising twins while also building her own career, often without the family support that can make those responsibilities easier.
There were times when her husband was deployed or when they lived apart during the week. Much of the responsibility for maintaining the household and caring for the family rested with her.
It was a demanding period, but it taught her lessons that later became valuable in business.
She learned how to adapt quickly. She became comfortable with change and developed the ability to keep moving forward even when circumstances were unpredictable.
That resilience would later become useful when she decided to establish a business of her own.
Starting something new after decades in an established professional environment required a different kind of confidence. There was no certainty that the idea would develop exactly as she imagined. There were new responsibilities, new decisions and the challenge of bringing an entirely new concept to life.
Yet the qualities she had developed over the years were already there.
She knew how to work hard. She knew how to build relationships. She knew how to listen, learn and adjust.
Turning Experience Into Something Useful
Today, Kerrie’s work is centred on taking what she has learned and making it useful to others.
Through C-Suite Insurance Academy, she wants executives, directors and senior leaders to feel more comfortable navigating corporate insurance. Her goal is not for them to become insurance experts. It is to give them the confidence and knowledge to recognise possible gaps, question assumptions and participate more effectively in conversations about their insurance programs.
Insurance literacy is ultimately about decision making.
For Kerrie, the most meaningful measure of her work is not simply how many people attend a program.
It is what they do with what they learn.
If someone finishes one of her programs and begins looking at their insurance differently, asks a question they might otherwise have overlooked, or identifies an exposure before it becomes a serious problem, she sees that as meaningful impact.
She also hopes her work can narrow the distance between the insurance industry and the businesses it serves. Creating better understanding between those two perspectives can benefit both sides.
A Definition of Success That Extends Beyond Revenue
Kerrie’s ambitions for C-Suite Insurance Academy are commercial, but they are not purely financial.
She wants the business to be profitable and sustainable. At the same time, she wants its success to create opportunities to contribute to causes and organisations where support is genuinely needed.
This is connected to a broader belief about what success should mean.
Building a business can provide independence, challenge and personal satisfaction. It can also create resources that can be directed toward something beyond the business itself.
Kerrie wants to experience all of those dimensions.
She wants to continue challenging herself professionally while enjoying the life she has worked hard to build. She wants to create something she can be proud of, something that genuinely helps people and something that can eventually contribute to the wider community.
Her faith and family also remain important sources of perspective. They remind her that professional achievement is only one part of a larger life.
There is ambition in Kerrie’s vision, but it is grounded in a simple understanding of what matters. A business should create value, but the value should not end with the person who owns it.
Passing Knowledge From One Generation to the Next
Looking ahead, Kerrie sees opportunities to expand the work beyond her current focus.
Construction is one area that interests her because of the complexity of insurance within the sector. Builders and contractors can face significant risks, yet responsibility for insurance decisions may sometimes be delegated to others without the people ultimately carrying the risk having a complete understanding of their coverage.
For Kerrie, this is another area where better understanding could make a significant difference.
She also sees a wider opportunity within the insurance profession itself.
After more than three decades in the industry, she knows how much knowledge experienced professionals accumulate throughout their careers. Some of that knowledge is technical, but much of it comes from experience, judgement and having seen what happens when things go wrong.
She would like to create opportunities for experienced insurance professionals to share that knowledge with others.
In that sense, her future vision is not only about growing her own business. It is about creating a stronger culture of knowledge sharing.
There is something meaningful in taking what one generation has learned and making it accessible to the next.
The Lessons That Took Decades to Make Sense
Kerrie’s story is also a reminder that careers rarely unfold in a perfectly straight line.
When she began working in insurance at 18, she could not have known that decades later she would be using what she had learned to build something of her own.
Looking back, the different roles, challenges and relationships form a clearer pattern. Experiences that once seemed separate have gradually revealed their value.
“You’re never too old to start something new.”
That belief sits naturally within Kerrie’s current chapter. She has reached a point in life where experience is not something she is simply looking back on. It is something she is actively putting to work.
Her story also reflects a deeper belief that experiences can have value even when their purpose is not immediately obvious. A role, challenge or decision may only reveal its significance years later.
For Kerrie, the path from an 18-year-old entering insurance to the founder of C-Suite Insurance Academy was not something she could have planned in advance.
It was something she gradually grew into.
The People Who Shaped How She Works
At the centre of Kerrie’s story is a strong sense of responsibility to other people.
Her mother, who is now 92, remains one of her greatest role models. She raised seven children while working full time, while Kerrie’s father worked three jobs to support the family.
Kerrie jokes that the strong work ethic was definitely inherited. “The generational wealth, unfortunately, seems to have missed us.”
What she did inherit, however, was something she considers far more valuable: the importance of perseverance, working hard and doing her best without making excuses.
Her professional mentors have also played an important role. Throughout her career, she encountered leaders who were willing to teach, challenge and encourage her.
She remembers the importance of people being generous with their knowledge, and she tries to reflect that generosity in her own work.
That may be one of the clearest connections between Kerrie’s past and present.
She spent much of her career learning from others. Now she is creating a business centred on helping others understand more.
Her approach remains grounded in integrity and honesty. She believes in doing what she says she will do, being direct when something is not right and treating people with respect.
Kerrie takes the responsibility of her work seriously, although she is considerably less serious about herself. She believes people are more likely to ask questions and learn when they feel comfortable doing so.
For someone working in an industry that deals with serious consequences, that human quality matters.
Insurance can involve difficult conversations and high stakes, but Kerrie believes people should still feel comfortable asking questions.
Making the Complicated Feel Less Intimidating
C-Suite Insurance Academy represents more than a new business chapter for Kerrie. It brings together the different parts of a career that, for many years, may have appeared to be separate.
Her technical knowledge, experience with clients and brokers, understanding of underwriting and claims, resilience and belief in the value of understanding have all found a common purpose.
She is building something that reflects what she has learned rather than simply moving on from it.
There is a quiet confidence in that approach. Kerrie does not suggest that business leaders need to know everything about insurance. She believes they need the confidence to engage with it properly.
That can begin with asking a better question.
It can mean understanding an unfamiliar term before approving a program, recognising that a particular exposure deserves more attention, or having a more informed conversation with a broker.
At this stage of her life, Kerrie is not trying to prove that she can start again. She is showing what can happen when decades of experience are given a new purpose.
Her work now is about making knowledge accessible, making insurance less intimidating and helping people make decisions with greater understanding.
Insurance literacy isn’t about knowing every answer. It’s about knowing what questions you need to ask.
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