Easy Does It

Sometimes, simple is best.

That may be particularly the case when talking about something like insurance – property and casualty or otherwise – which can be a complicated matter.

Alice Keung, senior vice president and chief transformation officer for Economical Insurance, can relate. “For me, insurance is a complicated business and adding to that mix is really regulation,” suggests Keung, who has held a number of senior roles, including with eHealth Ontario, the National Bank of Canada and Air Canada, before joining Economical Insurance in late 2015.

Making things simple is not only being welcomed by customers, it is increasingly expected and regarded as a marker of good service.

The idea is to “always require an outside-in perspective,” Keung says. “It’s about making it easy, it’s about making it simple and it’s about making it accessible.”

Couple simplicity and accessibility with increasing customer demands and technology finds itself an enabler to help bring the p&c insurance industry more in line with advances witnessed outside the business. “The driver of change is really not the technology at all; the driver of the change is the customer. They’re the ones who are actually disrupting, not the technology,” she says.

GAINING INSIGHT

Progress is clearly being made on the technology front, but much more needs to be done to best serve customers and create agile insurance players going forward. “I am surprised somehow that there is not a heavier technology footprint (in insurance), that when it comes to systems, everyone is still kind of working with their own systems as opposed to looking at interoperability from a customer perspective, to make it as easy as possible for them to interact and to get the best information and advice from us,” Keung says.

As part of her role as chief transformation officer, the idea is to “move beyond technology to leverage data so that we can make not only the transaction part be easy, but the whole experience actually be meaningful from (customers’) perspectives.”

Notes Keung: “Whether we like it or not, we have to turn to technology to leverage that. It could be about making it faster, it could be about making it always available, it could also mean that it could help you as a business – whether you’re a broker or a carrier – to take costs out of your business and, therefore, pass on that benefit to the customer.”

A key trend for the industry is going to be taking advantage of data and distilling insight from that, Keung expects. “One of the trends is really about analytics and to get to know the customer, what the customer expectations are and what their needs are.”

These insights can help insurance providers do many things, including designing different products and services. For her company, “it’s never about just getting the right product; it’s about having the foundation, whether it’s a capability or whether it’s an infrastructure, that we can scale very quickly and have the agility to execute.”

Keung expects another key trend will be on the digital side. “We are talking about an always-on and always-connected society now,” she says. “The more they are connected with different devices, the more they are able to do other things in real time. How will you as an organization be able to do that and to leverage that?”

This, of course, hinges on having both the right technology and plenty of data. But could data – and customer understanding of its value – prove a stumbling block?

Keung does not think so. “More and more, you see (customers) willing to share the data with you provided that you somehow reward them.” Immediate payback, though, is just the first layer.

It is about recognizing preferences so offerings can be tailored to suit specific needs and wants, Keung says. “Insurance needs to get to that point,” she contends. “If we continue to argue amongst ourselves or with our partners to say who owns the data, eventually the customer is going to tell us what they want, because they want us to use that data to do a better job in serving them.”

Keung expects that will become easier as the information base widens and is complemented by openly available information like that on social media. “If you could use that for the purpose of serving them better, for the purpose of actually doing the best job in tailoring a solution for them, I think they will welcome it,” she says of customers.

It is an approach being used by the insurer’s direct arm, Sonnet, to leverage third-party data and integrate as much disparate information as possible to simplify the process, make recommendations in real time and improve the overall experience. “Our objective is to be a multi-channel organization. And the reason for that is because we think we need to make sure that we serve the entire market.”

TECHNOLOGY JOURNEYS

Individual organizations in Canada’s p&c insurance run the gamut with regard to where they are on their technology journeys. “Not everything is about crash and burn and unplug it. It’s really about finding the technology so that they could actually talk to each other. It will save you time, it will certainly save you money. I would say that most carriers have to add as one of their major strategies either to replace or revamp their core system, but to layer it on with other technologies that intersect, have niche functionalities that fit very well,” Keung says.

“We all need to look inside and say where are all those multiple touchpoints that we really could streamline and make it much easier, both for ourselves to support it, and for the customers?” she says.

But it is not solely about individual goals; it needs also to be about industry objectives. “Integration is a big deal because we still do work with our ecosystem of partners, whether it’s BMS (broker management system) vendors, whether it’s quoting vendors, whether it’s third parties, everybody is using different standards,” Keung says.

“I think the industry, as a whole, should be just like other industries that have got together and agreed on standards so that it will make it easier, not just for one carrier or for one technology, but  for everybody, she adds.

Keung also sees ecosystems expanding. “You could partner with a Google; you could partner with, like in our case, cloud services, to make sure that it is always on and on in an efficient way. I think that ecosystem is going to expand and not all brokers need to have their own systems,” she suggests.

“Our investment in the policy-admin system for the broker channel is exactly for that,” says Keung. “The easier, the less work, the less wait for them means they can actually focus on doing their jobs, which is to interact with the customer,” she notes.

“More and more, the customer is looking for a seamless experience. I think the industry needs to figure out how we can simplify it so it makes it easier for brokers to do their jobs and also for the consumer to not look at it (buying insurance) as such a painful thing,” says Keung.

The question is:”How do we collectively change that?”