4:50 A.M.
Up for a 5 a.m. meeting with our Poland office. Thankfully the call is short; I jot down some notes and go back to sleep.
7:45 A.M.
Wake up and get ready for work. Check social media. While updating my Facebook status I shake my head - it's quite sad that my generation is hooked on online media. I grab a yogurt and slip on comfortable shoes to face the packed rush-hour NYC subway.
9:00 A.M.
At the office in Manhattan. I pull up records of the upcoming renewals for a client based in more than 70 countries worldwide. For each of these countries, I must keep track and coordinate their upcoming renewals of their employee benefits programs, evaluate quotes, advise on reasonability of proposed benefit changes, analyze claims ratios, underlying premium rates and overall premium change and ensure coverage is in line with the market practice in each specific country. I have about five or more policies for each country. For 70 countries. I have six clients. Do the math.
11:00 A.M.
Conference call with my colleagues in Latin America. In general, I work directly with colleagues who are based in the various countries. However, there are some countries where Mercer does not have offices on the ground, and here I must work directly with local brokers. (Thank goodness for my company-sponsored Rosetta Stone: Spanish!)
2:00 P.M.
Meet with a new client to discuss their options for the upcoming plan year and renewals. This multi-national company has employees in about 50 countries. In this meeting we're discussing the benefits of multi-national pooling, which would attempt to place their various coverages with worldwide insurance companies that have come together.
3:30 P.M.
Resume work on a benchmarking project that is due next week. Excited because this particular firm is based in many EMEA countries that most of my other clients aren't in (this includes Algeria, Azerbaijan, Kenya, Lithuania, United Arab Emirates and others).
6:00 P.M.
Resist temptation to go to happy hour with friends.
8:30 P.M.
Wrapping up. Send multiple e-mails to my contacts based in the eastern hemisphere so they can work on my requests and respond by tomorrow.
9:30 P.M.
Asia's just begun the next day and I need to have a quick call with Singapore. Their benefit plans must be updated due to recent changes in local legislation and the local client also wants to make some discretionary enhancements. These updates sound like they are going to be costly. My client, headquartered in New York, is not going to be happy about this.
11:00 P.M.
Final international call made to my loved ones back home in Trinidad & Tobago. Go to sleep and dream of visiting many of the countries that I work with on a day-to-day basis.
