The Insurance Business Innovation Summit is less than two weeks away. The Sydney event, on May 11, features two content streams: InsurTech and Claims Innovation. Both topic areas bring together industry experts for presentations and panels that showcase the latest technology and innovations in these key insurance industry areas.
One of IB’s event partners is Thales, the global data security firm.
“Insurers are in the middle of the digital transformation,” said Sai Ranjan (pictured above), regional manager of cloud protection and licensing (CPL) for Thales in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Ranjan is opening the conference.
“They need to differentiate for their customers any digital experience – that’s where they can find a new competitive edge,” he said. “At the same time they have a broad network of intermediaries that also need to change the way they work.”
Melbourne-based Ranjan said this digital differentiation needs to include brokers.
“Insurers are among the verticals with the highest ratio of intermediaries – aka brokers – versus employees,” he said. “To them the digital transformation is really a field education task.”
Ranjan’s colleague at Thales, Mohammad (Mo) Shahbeikian (pictured immediately below), is one of the presenters at the summit in the InsurTech stream.
Sydney-based Shahbeikian is his firm’s APAC solution engineering manager. His presentation, “Creating a secure and seamless insurance customer experience”, will look at how insurance companies can provide what he calls a “secure and seamless customer experience.”
“Insurers can now better tune the level of assurance they need and are required to provide along the customer’s digital journey,” Shahbeikian said.
He said this journey is no longer about filling long forms to get an insurance quote.
“It’s time for ‘progressive profiling,’” Shahbeikian said. “Then once it’s time to transition from quote to contract it’s time for higher security and verification.”
The talk by the Thales expert will look at why insurance companies must focus on delivering a frictionless, secure and compliant digital experience that prioritises customer data protections and privacy.
Shahbeikian said that one of the first challenges facing insurers in this area is efficiently sharing customer information.
“Many insurers still have digital records of selected customers only in the policy management system of a given product,” he said. “These records are very often isolated and not shared across the portfolio so that’s a big challenge in terms of visibility and user experience.”
AAMC, one of Australia’s largest providers of motor accident management services, is also an IB event partner at the Innovation Summit.
“It’s important for us to understand where technology is heading in relation to processing claims and delivering the customer experience, thus we then make sure that we align our services to suit,” said Daniel Lukich, AAMC’s sales and strategic relationship manager.
Lukich is delivering a presentation for the claims stream: “Intermediated Claims v Direct – The widening gap: Efficiency, Cost control and Customer experience.” Lukich will explain how motor claims stakeholders in the intermediated space can bridge the gap between the automation and customer service improvements within personal lines compared to their own sector.
“Technology does play a role, though on its own it’s not the silver bullet,” he said. “The ultimate goal in claims is enabling skilled people to play their part effectively with technology taking care of the inefficiencies.”
The idea, he said, is to promote the fact that insurance claims processes need to transition and be more relevant to today’s consumers.
“Unfortunately, not much has advanced,” he said. “We have peaked a lot of interest and held numerous discussions and no-one is disagreeing that the customer experience, especially for intermediated claims, is not great.”
Lukich sees the IB Innovation Summit as an important opportunity to renew his calls for change.
Sofia Lemaitre, head of insurance innovation for Flip Insurance, is also taking part in a panel at the summit. Her panel topic is: “Driving innovation to gain a competitive advantage.”
“For me, the question about driving innovation to gain competitive advantage directly relates to one of the things that is exciting for me at Flip and that I haven't done at other insurers,” Lemaitre said. “This is the ability to launch products and test things while they're in market and experiment.”
Alison Cameron’s panel topics is: “Navigating regulatory challenges in a complex market.” Cameron is head of governance, risk and compliance for Youi, an insurance company headquartered on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The firm’s offerings include motor, home, landlord and SME insurance.
“I think the sheer volume of regulatory change that has come through for the insurance and financial services industry, in the last two years in particular, has just been extraordinary,” said Sydney-based Cameron.
IB’s Innovation Summit is taking place on May 11 at the Fullerton Hotel in Sydney. You can register for the event here.
Event Partners Thales and AAMC are joined by sponsors Endava, Hello Claims and Alteryx.
