PH insurers urged to embrace technology for pandemic pivot

MANILA, Philippines—The global insurance industry remains resilient despite the coronavirus pandemic, but insurers — including those in the Philippines — must transition rapidly into the digital marketplace if they are to remain relevant to their clients.

Thus said Accenture managing director for intelligent operation centers Dennis Tan who noted that rising demand for digital insurance premiums and their online distribution were expected to displace $280 billion of current insurance revenues by 2025, challenging current customer retention levels.

“Insurers will also be expected to compete for new revenue growth in customer wellness, as they pursue digital partnerships to improve customer health and personal finances,” he said in a paper about building “future-ready” insurance operations.

Tan noted that the local insurance sector faces headwinds brought by changing spending habits, increased competition and the emergence of new product offerings to address specific insurance needs during pandemic times.

Despite this, insurers must continue to examine operations and see where business performance can be elevated amid pandemic restrictions – optimizing remote working models and cloud operations to increase digital customer acquisitions.

“The importance of operational resilience is the valuable lesson that companies across industries are realizing during these challenging times,” he said.

In another report, Accenture surveyed 100 insurance companies to understand the impact of advancing to “future-ready” operations maturity, which translates to the use of tech-savvy ways to acquire customers faster and discover new revenue streams.

This means combining data, technology, processes and people in intelligent, data-driven and more resilient operating models. Accenture found only one in 10 insurers have achieved future-ready operations but four in 10 expect to do so by 2023.

According to the same report, there are five actions that insurance companies can take to build resilience and become future-ready.

These are:

• Making stakeholder experience the company’s goal
• Bringing business and technology together
• Automating at scale to augment human talent
• Scaling artificial intelligence across the enterprise using cloud technology
• Building complementary ecosystem relationships.

“At Accenture’s Intelligent Operations Centers in the Philippines, we see the insurance industry’s digital transformation first-hand, as we collaborate with our teams across the globe to deliver intelligent insurance operations and capabilities to some of the world’s leading insurance companies,” Tan said.

“Leveraging on an impressive track record of working with the world’s top insurers and a collection of unique insurance tools and assets, our people can look ahead with confidence on the various opportunities, whether contributing to the transformation journey or building and sharpening insurance-specific expertise and skillsets such as in life and retirement services,” Tan added. “Either way, [it’s] a win-win situation for our people and the local IT-BPM talent in general.”

TSB