Understanding the innate social purpose at the heart of the insurance proposition requires a ‘show, don’t tell’ approach and it was this that made a career of Robert Burr’s (pictured) initial decision to take a job in insurance.
In an interview with Insurance Business, the CEO of iptiQ, Swiss Re’s digital B2B2C insurer, noted that his journey into the insurance market was a result of same the chance and circumstance trajectory shared by so many of his peers.
“One of my first jobs was as a life insurance agent – this is where I learnt to understand and appreciate the purpose of insurance. My first month on the job, I was working to deliver claims cheques to my Southwest London ‘patch’. I would go out to government and social housing to deliver death claims cheques and I’ve never forgotten the looks of relief on people’s faces as they realised they had one less thing to worry about.”
That was when he first really connected with the industry, he said, and he has carried that sense of purpose with him while serving the market in a variety of roles across a range of sectors. Looking back on his global career which has seen him hold senior leadership roles at companies including Cigna, AIG and Sun Life, Burr noted that his trajectory is not the kind you tend to discuss with career guidance counsellors.
“It has been a real journey,” he said. “I’ve been so fortunate to have such an international career to have had a lot of interesting experiences, met a lot of inspiring people and been to a lot of strange places along the way. And the main theme of my career, since I started in the business, has been my focus on consumers and policyholders. That emphasis on customers has really shaped my view on the industry and my journey to try and improve us improve who we are, what we do and how we do it.”
Burr said it has been fascinating to see how the insurance and reinsurance markets have evolved since he first joined Swiss Re in 2011, and its rapid professionalisation in the face of the realisation that it’s better to self-regulate than have regulation imposed on you. This professionalisation is being reflected in the move by technology providers to create insurance-centric solutions that respond to the needs of the policyholder and the customer experience they’ve come to expect.
It's an especially timely aspect, considering the challenge so many insurance companies face when communicating the purpose of insurance, given that all too often it’s either a mandatory or a distress purchase. Insurance is intangible in nature, he said, which is why all too often an undereducated or underinformed consumer is left questioning the value of purchasing insurance.
The reality is that an underinformed consumer means that, as an industry, insurance has a responsibility to educate customers, Burr said. And the secret to unlocking that understanding lies within the claims proposition, because it’s in the claims process that the value of insurance is actually delivered. While there’s a lot of conversation around GenAI and automation in insurance, it remains the case that in the event of a claim, a claims handler is in the first order of individuals contacted – which is why innovation in insurance remains a measured, considered and long-game play.
For iptiQ, he said, the name of the game is to help partners provide state-of-the-art digital insurance solutions to meet customer needs in more efficient ways. With its B2B2C model, the business partners with other insurers, brokers, banks and consumer brands to make insurance easier accessible and more affordable for the end-customer.
“We’re not an insurtech, we are a tech-enabled insurance company,” he explained. “We have capital and we deploy that capital to transfer risks, which is what an insurance company does. You can have as much technology as you want but, for us, it’s an enabler, not our core right to exist. And with more than two million policies in force, we’re definitely not a startup either!”
The evolution of iptiQ to date has been hard won, Burr said, but the organisation prides itself on being one committed to continuous learning and improvement – and to sharing the knowledge that stems from that with the wider market. And what has become very clear from this piece is that technology has to serve as an enabler in translating the fundamental purpose of insurance to customers.
The value of insurance needs to be better articulated and more widely discussed if the industry is going to continue to be fit for purpose as technology continues to advance and customer expectations continue to evolve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an insurer, a reinsurer or a broker, he said, the pressure is on to manage policyholders’ expectations and deliver on their evolving needs.
“Another challenge is the issue of scalability,” he said. “When you are building a technology-driven business, you need scale, because the investment required to build these platforms is significant. And the only way to get the right kind of payback is to build scalable businesses. At the end of the day, digital insurance platforms have to be reliable and add value to the customer experience. Getting that balance right continues to be our main goal, and that journey is only going to continue.”
