September 22, 2023

The current Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards highlighted the world’s main insurance coverage changemakers. The winners of every class stood up towards robust competitors with initiatives that weren’t solely progressive, however efficient and with measurable influence. On this weblog collection, I will probably be delving a bit deeper into every class, illustrating how every winner is on the forefront of innovation. Earlier than we start, you could discover a change – Efma lately modified its identify to Qorus to replicate its international relevance within the monetary companies panorama and reinforce its give attention to the group.

It’s essential to contextualize any dialogue on innovation with the forces at present driving the insurance coverage panorama. New rising dangers and a remodeling threat panorama current new dangers (environmental, local weather change) and alternatives (cyber, new digital economies, new infrastructure) for insurers. The convergence of industries and rising ecosystems is driving product innovation, new distribution methods and gamers. Collectively, these components are collaborating to develop the worth proposition of insurers, from reactive threat indemnification to proactive and ongoing threat prevention and mitigation. Additionally, the brand new enterprise atmosphere we’re in, which incorporates increased inflation charges and a probably recessionary atmosphere, would require improvements to additionally tackle effectivity/bottom-line goals to the advantage of each insurers and policyholders (the Discovery case is an effective illustration).

On high of this, we have now witnessed healthcare turning into a central pattern. Accenture’s Insurance Revenue Landscape 2025: Innovate for resilience study anticipates monumental income alternatives for insurers from well being/wellness and life services and products.

In a current survey, Redefining Wellness: Global Survey Sheds New Light on Opportunities for Insurers, RGA, a life and well being reinsurer, discovered that an amazing variety of insurers – 85% – reported making wellness a ‘precedence’ and an integral a part of the options being developed to assist buyer wants, with almost 3/5 of respondents incorporating wellness into product choices, together with insurance-linked wellness packages, applied sciences, and instruments.

Linked Ecosystems & Marketplaces – AIA (Thailand)

This insurance coverage shift in the direction of wellbeing is obvious in our Linked Ecosystems & Marketplaces 2022 class, which celebrates progressive practices that give rise to new enterprise fashions, scalable end-to-end worth propositions that capitalize on the ability of partnerships, platforms and the Web of Issues. The class winner, AIA (Thailand) obtained the award for its ALive cell software. This ecosystem of well being and wellness choices goals to place group at its core by supporting younger households and serving to them lead more healthy, longer and higher lives.

Prashant Agarwal, Head of Digital Advertising and marketing, AIA Group, says “Life and well being are two areas the place the insurer’s business goals and the patron’s private ones overlap fully. The more healthy you’re and longer you reside, the higher the insurer does too. Due to this fact, wellness is the result clients search, however it’s merely higher enterprise too. We embrace shared worth as a elementary precept of how we function, increasing effectively past the position a transactional payer of claims, to a relational companion to our clients’ all through their life and well being journeys. This creates a triple win: for the shopper, AIA, and society, assuaging the burden of a public well being disaster for governments.”

Product & Service Innovation – Discovery Well being

Within the Product & Service Innovation award, this 12 months’s winners Discovery, a life and well being insurer from South Africa, illustrated the ability of innovation with the shopper on the centre with its Discovery Hospital at House innovation. The product supplies an alternate care setting for a spread of medical and post-surgical situations that will in any other case require hospital admission.

Dr Botho Mhozya, Head of Well being Skilled Danger and Hospital at House, Discovery Well being says, “Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital healthcare applied sciences by sufferers and healthcare suppliers and pushed the proliferation of digital / “at House” care supply. Accenture’s 2020 Digital Health Consumer Survey discovered that sufferers embraced digital care through the pandemic, with the bulk discovering digital care nearly as good or higher than in-person care. Roughly 60% of those sufferers would need to use expertise and digital care extra going ahead. At Discovery, the elevated adoption of digital healthcare has been evidenced by the exponential improve in using telemedicine with Discovery Linked Care logins having elevated by 763% since 2019. This elevated adoption of digital healthcare globally and the necessity to ease the burden on more and more overwhelmed healthcare methods, highlighted the affected person’s residence as an essential and related setting for delivering healthcare. This offered a novel alternative for expertise to allow supply of protected, environment friendly, and handy hospital-level medical care in a house atmosphere.”

Discovery Well being launched Discovery Hospital at House to offer an alternate setting of take care of members recognized with COVID-19. Greater than 100 members of the Discovery Well being Medical Scheme have been efficiently handled for COVID-19 of their properties throughout 2021, all with the identical or improved ranges of medical outcomes and a greater affected person expertise. In January 2022, the programme eligibility standards have been expanded to incorporate all clinically applicable medical and post-surgical situations that will in any other case require admission to a hospital for normal ward stage of care. The programme was additional expanded to make sure nationwide availability of the service and the capability prolonged to allow admission of as much as 750 sufferers at any given time. This makes it the biggest hospital at residence supplier in South Africa.

Mhozya provides, “The pandemic additionally confirmed us that controllable behaviours drive outcomes of not solely non-communicable ailments however communicable ailments as effectively, with international analysis demonstrating that greater than 50% of COVID-19 associated deaths are attributed to people with three or extra comorbidities. Enterprise fashions that assist make individuals more healthy, whereas concurrently decreasing the worth of insurance coverage, due to this fact have the potential to make a profound contribution to society by constructing resilience towards each non-communicable and communicable ailments and serving to people and healthcare methods climate extreme shocks. The rise in availability and adoption of digital healthcare instruments can be enabling insurers to collect extra information, and provide extra focused well being interventions, than ever earlier than.”

The shopper want for seamless, distant experiences extends past healthcare. The mixture of demographic and socio-cultural adjustments, along with higher technological capabilities are driving insurers to improve their insurance coverage options to extra clear, personalised, seamless, and omni-channel services and products throughout the board. For instance, using clever applied sciences is reworking the way in which the insurance coverage business approaches claims. And this isn’t solely to the advantage of youthful digital-savvy clients. As reported within the newest Accenture Insurance Global Consumer Study, older customers present an rising choice for digital claims with 71% saying they want the web chat/video insurance coverage declare course of to exchange the normal in-office declare course of.

Buyer Expertise – Allianz Companions

This shift comes by way of within the winner of the Re-imagining the Buyer Expertise 2022 award – Allianz Partners’ Visi’ House. José Antonio Molleda, International Head of Product Administration and Innovation House Help at Allianz Companions says, “The pandemic put strain on properties as they reworked into a college, an workplace, a childcare facility, and the whole lot in between. On this context, surprising issues at residence will be particularly nerve-racking: electrics, fuel dysfunction, heating breakdown, and so forth. At Allianz Companions we act as guardian angels defending what actually issues, by combining digital intuitive options and the human contact to really construct distinctive experiences all through key moments of our clients’ life. Primarily based on this ethos we created a product that, by way of distant residence help, connects clients with an expert declare handler at any time, offering instant prognosis of the issue {and professional} steerage to repair it on the spot when it’s doable, or straight setting an appointment with the proper craftsman.”

Visi´House was launched in July 2021, delivering promising leads to the primary three months. He provides, “First name decision fee elevated by 18%, whereas decision time was dramatically diminished, leading to an enhanced total buyer expertise. Clients worth comfort essentially the most, proper after immediacy and empathy from our knowledgeable declare handlers. By fixing the issue on the spot by way of distant help and with out the intervention of a craftsman, clients can have all of it. Final however not least, Visi´House permits a major discount in CO2 emissions by way of 15% of prevented interventions which has additionally been positively obtained by our clients.”

As these three Innovation in Insurance coverage winners present, aligning to buyer wants and utilizing expertise strategically can open up new channels of worth. Look out for the subsequent article within the collection the place I’ll focus on the leaders of the opposite classes.

See the full 2022 Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance list.


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Disclaimer: This content material is offered for normal data functions and isn’t meant for use rather than session with our skilled advisors.