Better customer experience through innovation and collaboration in the insurance space

A hassle-free experience is one of the top demands among insurance customers. While the service experience may be most heavily associated with financial consultants, there’s only so much they can do without strong backend processes in place.

Backend operations play an underappreciated part in giving customers peace of mind. Take premium payments for example. When payments come in, either through bank transfers or in the form of cheques, they don’t always sport unique identifiers such as the policy holder’s policy number. When payments without any identifiers are made, your insurer isn’t able to identify and track your payment immediately, causing delays in payment reconciliation. That’s a lot of anxiety over what appears to be a minor problem at first glance.

Photo credit: Phonlawat Chaicheevinlikit / 123RF

To iron out these kinks that may be a hindrance to great customer experience, insurers are constantly exploring ways to strengthen such operations to deliver a far superior service experience, and smart technology is emerging as a solution to their challenges.

Tech can improve lives

Prudential Singapore recognizes this, and through its PRU Fintegrate Partnership program, aims to address the above issues and more by collaborating with technology companies to come up with solutions to solve its business challenges. Launched in 2017, the program seeks to find solutions that will enable Prudential’s employees to work smarter and more efficiently, and its financial consultants to better engage with customers.

The program “is about fostering greater innovation through such partnerships,” explains Kalai Natarajan, head of strategic engagements at Prudential Singapore. “To bring about the right solutions that can meet the needs of our customers as well as our employees and the financial consultants who serve them.”

Innovations in the insurance industry are focused on getting to know the customer better through artificial intelligence and data analytics, as well as fundamental areas such as backend finance functions.

For example, in the case of the premium payment process, smart tech such as an artificial intelligence solution could be used to recognize and tag payment transfers to a policyholder’s unique number. These measures could result in time savings for both insurance companies and customers.

It goes beyond just backend functions, however. On a broader level, technology could play a big role in protecting lives, especially in Asia, where the population is still largely underinsured. Even in a developed country like Singapore, for instance, the mortality protection gap – or the difference between the amount of life insurance people have and the amount they need – is at 20%, and the critical illness protection gap – or the financial gap to cover the needs of dependents as well as the policyholder when a major illness strikes – is at 80%. Close to 42% of Singaporeans and permanent residents between the ages of 20 and 34 don’t have a single life or critical illness policy.

Technology can help plug these gaps by making insurance more inclusive. For example, AI can be used to detect insurance needs from patterns in big data, which in turn allows highly-tailored plans – that fit specific individuals’ needs and financial capabilities – to be crafted and offered.

From left: Piotr Skrabski, LiveBank (Ailleron) General Manager; Wilf Blackburn, Prudential Singapore CEO; Kalai Natarajan, Prudential Singapore Head, Strategic Engagements / Photo credit: Prudential Singapore

Concrete steps to innovation

In the last edition of the program, which concluded in January this year, Prudential Singapore announced partnerships with customer engagement solutions provider Ailleron, health data analytics company Knowtions Research, and automated machine learning platform DataRobot to work on solutions centered around improving the customer experience and addressing their evolving healthcare and financial needs across life stages.

“We want to innovate to help everyone live well – from empowering our people to lead healthier lives to enabling the next generation to better plan for their future,” says Natarajan. “Collaborating with scaleups by tapping into their unique expertise helps us in realizing this mission.”

Scaleups that work with Prudential Singapore can accelerate their digital journeys and bring their tried-and-tested solutions to a high-potential industry. “The solutions that will be created for us here in Singapore can be potentially deployed across our 12 markets in Asia to benefit our 15 million customers in the region,” Natarajan points out.

Promising signs

The insurance industry in Southeast Asia shows signs that it is ready for a digital transformation, with 400-odd fintech companies offering benefits such as personalized protection plans and greater service convenience.

A bigger shift is taking place with solutions now being explored in preventative healthcare as insurers realize the value of helping their customers stay healthy amid rising medical costs and increasing incidence of chronic disease. Prudential Singapore, for example, is “venturing into the wellness space,” reveals CEO Wilf Blackburn.

Wilf Blackburn, CEO of Prudential Singapore / Photo credit: Prudential Singapore

“Our customers are living longer, but not all of those extra years are necessarily spent in good health. This is why we want to work with tech partners to develop healthcare solutions that help people live healthier, and to prevent and postpone the progression of chronic diseases.”

Guided by this goal, the company aims “to invest in technology to create solutions in preventative healthcare to help customers and the community at large live better and healthier for longer,” shares Blackburn.

PRU Fintegrate Partnership is Prudential Singapore’s flagship innovation program for fintech, insurtech, healthtech, and medtech scaleups around the world. It aims to build an ecosystem of relevant partners to help solve business challenges with creative solutions. The identified scaleup from the 2019 edition will have the opportunity to partner with Prudential Singapore to run a proof of concept based on a mutually-agreed scope, and will also be invited to showcase its solution at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019.

Find out more about the program and apply to participate here.