Moses Ojeisekhoba spent the first four years of his career knocking on doors in middle- and upper-class neighbourhoods in California, selling life insurance to people who didn’t look or speak like him.

“You could see the surprise on people’s faces and the reactions,” says Ojeisekhoba, who is now the chief executive of the reinsurance unit of Swiss Re — and one of the few Black executives in the world of insurance. “In one form or another, it has always been there.