As global head of digital, wealth and insurance at HSBC, Reginald Warlop has spearheaded two major digital transformations. The first at AOL in 2004 when the company transferred from a DSL provider to become a media company, and now with HSBC.
“My career to date… has always been about creating and delighting customers via mobile, online and other experiences,” said Warlop. “I am an entrepreneur. I am someone who likes to start up new things.”
Digital transformation within the insurance industry is, according to Warlop, both ahead and behind the curve.
“[Insurance] is a very digitally-centric business already,” he said. “It’s amazing how much customers can already do online by themselves.”
The area where the industry lags most is when it comes to considering their proposition, according to Warlop. The business model of the insurance is industry is based on big premiums because of large abstractions of who the customers are, and this model is likely to be dramatically changed due to the increased demand for flexibility and personalisation.
HSBC’s recently launched subscription insurance deal, ‘Select and Cover’, is in direct response to what Warlop sees as this increased demand.
“There’s a trend in the younger generation where they want to see greater flexibility in terms of what is covered,” he said. People expect a simple pricing structure with greater transparency, and they expect that their loyalty to an insurer will be rewarded when they are buying multiple products in one go.
It is these changing requirements that drive most digital transformation according to Warlop. A younger generation who place more emphasis on experiences rather than things is driving the need for innovation within the insurance industry. The insurer of tomorrow, he said, must focus on building “greater trust and greater engagement with the customers.”
Warlop said that a key necessity is for the insurer to have a constant dialogue with the customer and he believes that new technologies and innovations are key to moving the direction of insurance from protection to prevention. This is the role of new products such as ‘Select and Cover’, he said, which he is advocating strongly to launch beyond the UK market.
Warlop understands the worry of small brokers in particular when it comes to the question of digital transformation. This is a legitimate concern, he detailed, citing the laborious nature of many operations today and how “a lot of people are still making it really hard to understand how you are covered.”
Brokers can rise to the digital transformation challenge, according to Warlop, by increasing the transparency of their offering, and he believes that policy aggregation especially can help highlight the role of the broker.
“If you start aggregating your policies with one broker they can tell you when to renew and when to transition from one provider to another provider to eliminate duplicate covers,” he said. “A broker can really help demystify and provide transparency, which today is really hard to figure out from a customer perspective.”
Warlop believes in the value of people when it comes to insurance and mentioned the areas of insurance, particularly in sectors of sensitive cover, which are almost impossible to sell online and require empathy and care when they are discussed.
“You have to have an interaction with an advisor,” he stated, “with a human to cover the options and the possibilities.”
Throughout his own career, Warlop credits the success of his digital transformation projects to the team he has built around himself and he values this as one of the greatest achievements of his professional life.
“We had a lot of room to shape things [at HSBC],” he said. “I’m really proud of the fact we have been able to create…brand new experiences that are now award-winning around the world.”
