The insurance industry stands at a tipping point of profound change. There is an imperative need for rapid innovation among players in the market with revenues from core business activities becoming stagnant.
The gradual opening up of the market and rising use of technologies also open up huge opportunities, enabling insurers to boost operational efficiency, carve out alternative business models and use newfound insights to create customized solutions.
Innovation is an ongoing process and those who move fast will be the ones that will thrive and reap the rewards in the near future with more satisfied customers, lower operating costs, and accelerated growth in a reborn industry.
More Ideas in Less Time
With over 50 years of success as a leading innovation partner, Zuhlke works closely with many of its financial services clients on digital transformation and solutions built for rapid business growth. Christoph Broecker (pictured below), Managing Director of Zuhlke Hong Kong, explains how the firm partners with insurance businesses to support them in transforming their culture, technologies, and business strategy to position themselves in the ecosystem for the digital future.
For insurers to be attractive to the customers of tomorrow, they not only have to become more innovative but also move faster. They need to develop, evaluate and launch more ideas in less time. This requires a strong culture of innovation, expert know-how, and skilled engineering expertise.
Open Culture as Innovator
Culture is key to realizing an organization’s potential. A more agile, innovation-embracing, risk-conscious and customer-centric culture is one of the biggest sustainable advantages an insurance business can hold against competitors in the new landscape. Why?
Because it is the hardest to replicate. Product offerings, prices and distribution can always be imitated and matched easily, but a deep-rooted culture takes determined energy, strong commitment, and years to build.
«Many of our global clients look to us for support on bringing in strong engineering practices and agile working culture to their teams. This includes introducing development practices like DevOps and Continuous Delivery. They all form part of the foundation to enable teams to work more effectively and improve time to market to deliver new digital products and services to drive the business,» says Christoph Broecker.
Read case study: «How Switzerland's largest insurer transformed into an agile project management culture for developing a risk management platform»
So how do you define a winning culture? It’s an open environment where teams across disciplines can work together positively towards clearly defined shared goals. One where innovation is encouraged, shared, and creative ideas can be pursued and adopted into the business’ products and services quickly and meaningfully.
Culture is only as strong as the people who bring it to life. And a healthy innovation culture can only be sustained by bringing in the right talents, constant alignment and communication from leadership to working-level teams, and focusing on talent development and upskilling for in-house teams.
Open Technologies as Foundation
Many insurers are stepping up the pace when it comes to adopting new technologies such as APIs (application programming interfaces), big data, IoT, block-chain and AI to enrich their product mix and to tap into the younger, tech-savvy generation. Companies in the insurance sector typically work with a large amount of backlogged data in their database, but they often lack the resources to extract the maximum value from all that information.
By using the correct tools, these data can be used to optimize business operations and gain insights into how business decisions impact growth. For example, historical data can be injected into AI-driven analytics tools to improve underwriting efficiency, fraud detection, and risk pricing, as well as for risk management and dealing with claims.
Technical Competence
Open APIs allow financial services to plug third-party solutions into their systems with ease, enabling them to react to customer needs by bringing in new services or functionality quickly. Beyond diversifying through new products, APIs are also critical to align processes and IT infrastructure in ways that work across corporate boundaries. At the same time, insurers must continue to evolve their core competencies of compliance, governance and security.
«A common problem for many incumbents? Legacy systems that are holding them back in innovating and scaling up. Zuhlke has both the business know-how to support in developing an ecosystem strategy as well as the technical competence with our expertise in microservices, cloud technology, security, strategic API development and more,» Christoph Broecker goes on to elaborate.
Read case study: «How Zuhlke supported one of Europe’s leading life insurance companies in building a Blockchain platform for real estate trading»
Open Ecosystem as Winning Model
On-the-go, personalized, and discerning – today's customers are looking for novel offerings that are well suited for their changing habits and needs in the new normal. Insurtechs and other players in the ecosystem are developing new, emerging products building on modern technologies, and constantly creating new touchpoints to engage with potential customers.
Customers will be taking out insurance policies somewhere else in the future – at a car dealership, when shopping online or at a ticketing machine. Insurance companies will therefore only succeed if they are part of the right ecosystem and offer the right products at the right time.
A healthy ecosystem consists of interconnected services that can satisfy customers' expectations via an integrated experience. The focus here is clearly on providing the best customer value and outstanding experience. Primary insurers have banked heavily on the high level of trust they enjoyed with customers when it comes to deciding on the next insurance product. But rising trends have shown that consumers are switching carriers more often than ever and are increasingly open to new entrants including insurtechs and other non-traditional players.
Top Priority for Insurers
In a recent COVID-19 Consumer Survey commissioned by Swiss Re published in April 2020, respondents prioritized speed, simplicity and fulfillment over financial savings when it comes to insurance policies. The ability of an insurer to process policies and claims online is a top priority while processing policies online from start to finish was a top consideration for selecting an insurer. It’s crucial now for incumbent insurers to offer a simple, digital and delightful customer experience, allowing for predictive, targeted and timely purchase experiences, omnichannel customer support, and redefine what it means to create customers for life.
«A very interesting project we worked on recently with one of the most innovative insurers in Asia is to build an all-new mobile booking and review app on a modern tech stack for health-related services in Hong Kong. A great example of how insurers can go beyond traditional services to offer added value and meaning for consumers to stay loyal to their brand,» Christoph explained, referring to the innovative work of Zuhlke’s specialists in the regional insurance sector.
Swiss Roots – Global Reach
Ultimately, the most powerful model for innovation is a collaboration among ecosystem players including incumbents, new players like insurtechs, platform enablers and solution specialists — using open technology platforms and sharing knowledge in an open manner to create new opportunities and real value-added services and products for the entire industry.
Swiss roots, global reach. Zuhlke is committed to sustainable growth in the ASEAN region with heavy investment in regional talents and involvement in the local community and tech ecosystem. Zuhlke continues to actively explore partnership and collaboration opportunities with like-minded partners to accelerate sustainable growth in the region.
Looking for a partner to accelerate your digital innovation or develop your next wow idea? Reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to speak to innovation experts at Zuhlke or visit www.zuhlke.asia for more info.
