JOSE SUQUET- "THAT IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, IN THE NONPROFIT WORLD”

During his four decades in the insurance industry, José Suquet has found that networking and friendship building can open doors to membership in company boards and one of best keys is a leadership role with a prominent nonprofit organization.

SUQUET IS currently chief executive officer, president and chairman of the board for New Orleans-based Pan-American Life Insurance Group, a company he joined in 2004, and also serves on the boards of Regions Financial Corporation and Ochsner Health System.

Suquet, who was born in Cuba, shared his perspective how board candidates, especially Hispanics who are underrepresented in governance roles, can build opportunities, He also discussed the importance of vetting board offers and how profoundly different a board seat is from the management suite.

For a start, Suquet suggests that board aspirants look at a nonprofit, become involved in its inner workings, such as through its committees, and use this relationship as a platform to expand a network of professional acquaintances. He is convinced his two-term membership with Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, New Orleans Branch, lead to a board seat. "I was probably the most junior member of that board," he said, "We had people running Delta Airlines, Home Depot and Suntrust Bank.” One of his acquaintances was the CEO of Regions Financial, one of the largest bank holding companies. While Suquet was with the Fed Reserve he couldn't serve on a bank board, but the Region's CEO knew the insurance executive's term was ending – term limits apply – and spoke to him about an opportunity to join his board. Suquet accepted the invitation and joined the Regions Financial board in 2017. He would chair the audit committee which he said, "in itself is an undertaking role." "One of the best pieces of advice I got was just to ask is have you ever had a claim on your directors’ and officers’ coverage," he said. "It is a very openended question and a couple of other potential boards I was looking at had claims and one of them went to the extreme of saying, 'well, we will have to need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement if we gave you that answer'" Suquet said. "To me that was I huge red flag," he said. "I don't want anything to do with coming into that type of situation.

For Suquet, there is a basic difference between being a high-level company executive and serving on a company board where a broad, forward governance is essential. "As CEO of a company he is involved in the day-day-to day issues, but as a board member you are dealing primarily with the CEO and you are getting exposure to the top management of the company and are there to support the CEO on strategy and implementation of the strategy."

A board of directors, as a body, needs to understand a company's strategic planning process, Suquet said, and to question a strategy when it does not appear right and supporting when it does, with periodic checks on its implementation.

Directors also need to assist the company in succession planning. As the CEO is getting ready to retire, the board should be very much intimately involved in the choosing of the new CEO," he said. Two years after Suquet joined the Regions board, that chairman, who had invited him to take a seat, decided he was ready to retirement. "So, we conducted a very extensive internal and external search and we landed one of the top internal candidates.”

While company directors focus on such priorities like ESG and diversity, they also are being compelled to pay more attention to information security and talent management and the succession planning in the "new world of remote work." Cyber-attacks represent a big threat to the economy and companies, he said, alluding to the high-profile attacks on the pipeline and on a major meat processing company, this situation has meant that companies and their boards, he said, are spending quite a bit of time on the related issues of recovery, remediation and resilience – how an attacked company recover and how long will it take to get back up to speed.

Another issue that companies need to address is the impact of the increased prevalence of remote work in the pandemic on their culture."Part of the advantages of working together are the collaboration, the mentoring and the learning that takes place and that I was fortunate to have in my entire career," that is a very relevant topic to analyze now.