Senior Vice President of Insurance, Jamie Macgregor and Senior Insurance Analyst, Nicolas Michellod of Celent’s Insurance Group
This event is free to attend for Celent clients, flex-plan clients, and the media. Non-clients can attend for a fee of US$250. If you are unsure of your client status, please contact Chris Williams at +44 208-870-7875 or cwilliams@celent.com .
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Donald Light, Director of Celent’s Americas Property/Casualty Insurance Practice
This event is free to attend for Celent clients, flex-plan clients, and the media. Non-clients can attend for a fee of US$250. If you are unsure of your client status, please contact Chuck Smith at +1.617.262.3124 or csmith@celent.com.
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Earlier this month, Model Insurer Asia Summit was held by Celent at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore. With approximately 50 delegates from across the APAC region, it was a fantastic event to learn from others, debate the key issues facing the industry, and network across the region.
A total of 18 firms were recognised this year from over 8 countries, with entries ranging from large regional technology transformations through to novel uses of technology to enable propositions.
Tokio Marine presented just one such novel use of technology to enable a proposition where an app-based avatar is employed to provide health advice for women based upon how their body is feeling in support of a health insurance product. This solution goes as far to include tracking the insured’s body temperature using a smartphone and a connected thermometer in order to identify when they may be coming down with an illness. I just love this idea! After talking about the potential for personal telemetry within the health insurance sector for several years now within Celent, it’s great to see a live proposition racing towards it. Since its launch in June 2013, Tokio Marine has added 250,000 users already.
The Model Insurer Asia of the Year winner was awarded to Max Bupa Health Insurance (MBHI) from India. Being a relatively new player in India at around four years old, MBHI had aggressive plans to launch new distribution channels whilst not losing sight of delivering an excellent customer service experience. It chose to implement a BPM solution to wrap around its existing applications, enabling it to deliver a consistent end-to-end process that achieved a 75% increase in processing capacity and 90% improvement in service level agreements. This is a great example of how, when applied effectively, technology can truly deliver a differential business performance.
To find out more about these (and the 16 other finalists), a copy of the Model Insurer Asia report can be downloaded by Celent clients at http://ift.tt/1gksfTv.
Finally, this year, we sandwiched the summit between two roundtable discussions: one on the use of digital and ‘big data’ to enable innovation in insurance; and the other one on regional distribution opportunities and challenges. Round-table discussions of this nature are always a great way to get detailed insights around the main challenges facing firms quickly. Unfortunately, I can’t share too much as they’re closed sessions and “what’s said in the room, stays in the room”. However, what I can share with you is that many of the opportunities and challenges facing individual firms across the Asian region are shared with insurers from around the world. There is a growing desire to provide a more engaging proposition with the end client, a need to secure new forms of distribution, and an acceptance that effective technology is at the heart of future business performance. Sound familiar? That said, unlike perhaps some other geographic regions, regional diversity in distribution, regulation, population prosperity, language, character set, and political goals, make it more difficult for insurers, vendors and SIs / consultancies to navigate with a ‘one size fits all’ policy. It’s this diversity coupled together with the regional growth rates for emerging financial services that make the region one of the most fascinating to follow and one that we expect to see a lot more innovation come out over the coming decade.
The following text was published today in Inter-American Dialogue’s Financial Services Advisor under the title: “What is driving the insurance market in Latin America?”
I provided my view to FSA in advance, and now that it is out there I thought it made sense to share it with you through our blog.
Growth continues to be a common theme throughout the region, though not at the same pace that before and not equally in all countries. The Pacific Alliance countries have been growing faster than Mercosur countries, for example.
Insurance in Latin America has its own dynamics and has been growing year over year, even beyond GDP increase, and is expected to continue this trend through 2014.
A growing middle class is driving insurance buoyance in the region, with Brazil much setting the tone. Estimates indicate that 40M people have gone from living in poverty to the middle class in the past decade in Brazil. Nevertheless, there is a large number of people in the base of the pyramid (BoP) which is also of interest of insurers.
Infrastructure investments, trade, and group life and benefits to attract employees are key drivers for commercial insurance growth.
We are seeing moves towards consolidation in certain countries which are imposing stronger capital requirements and also acquisitions and new entrants into high growth potential markets, such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Competition is increasing and new segments are being targeted with more focus. All this is driving higher investments from insurers as well as competition for qualified talent in the marketplace.
Some countries are moving towards a stricter risk-based capital measurement, and the rest should move in the same direction as part of a global and regional trend.
In many countries sales practices are far from innovative and what customers expect to be. There is a need to evolve in the use of distribution channels and provide a better customer experience. Most insurers are still tied to legacy systems that impose a burden to become more competitive, efficient and smart.
Rising inflation, weakening of financial market due to lower quality of loans (as they compete for the raising middle class); lower demand of products from China (mostly commodities), Europe and USA, and risk aversion from foreign investors are some of the concerns shadowing the region’s potential.
