In late August my colleagues Mike Fitzgerald, Fabio Sarrico and myself were in Sao Paulo, Brazil attending InsuranceTech 2015.
The objective was to spend a few days looking where the Latin American insurance industry is headed in terms of business and technology and what level of success have some insurers already achieved. As the agenda of the event suggests there were very interesting cases such as Wibe (BBVA’s digital platform for insurance) and Rimac’s transformation process among others.
Along with Mike and Mick Simonelli we hosted our innovation workshop for 3rd consecutive year and looked into the state of innovation in LATAM insurers (Report is now published). While there seems to be room for improvement, we are now discussing how to innovate and not just what innovations (or emerging tech/trends) insurers should be looking at, which was the focus for most of insurers when we first started these workshops. For me this is a huge improvement.
Mick’s experience as innovation practitioner at USAA and now collaborating with several leading financial institutions as innovation consultant resulted in many questions from audience. As for technologies and trends to watch we covered several, including IoT and machine learning.
Our research shows that despite much is being said about innovation there are still important barriers to overcome; noticeably “lack of top level leadership” stands out as #1.
Our research around digital also shows that most insurers are in a basic stage, but just to prove us wrong (or better said, the one example that shows it is possible to go beyond basic) BBVA Bancomer Seguros shared how they innovated by creating Wibe, their own digital brand and platform starting with auto insurance (even Uber coverage!). Wibe’s case is a good combination of digital, customer experience, execution, and leadership to bring all together in a short period of time and within an established insurer (and bank). Wibe already has +2.2 million visitors to their website, 61% using a mobile, and their youtube commercials were seen +1 million times each. This translated into +200,000 quotes and +3,000 vehicles insured since launching early this year.
Rimac’s transformation case was also a great example of leadership, vision, execution and persistence in a Tier 2 insurer. Their journey started in 2010 when they defined the strategic plan. Rimac wanted to become a customer centric insurer and for that they required to transform and simplify their IT platform, among other programs which basically touched everywhere in the company. A total of 65 sub-programs were identified just in IT.
Becoming more digital was one of the objectives, along with re-use: the idea to be able to create once and easily deploy in different channels.
Rimac’s transformation is still work in progress (does any transformation program ever end?), nevertheless they shared several indicators of success already. Digital enabled sales represent 1% of premium but they expect this to grow significantly in following years; at least the IT infrastructure is ready and available for the business to take advantage.
A common thread here seems to be execution and leadership; not time, not money (true that you need to be ready to invest; but how much will depend on the type of project). I also believe that execution and leadership are highly tied to culture; and as Mick usually notes: “Culture eats innovation for lunch”. By now I hope you figured out what I am trying to imply…
Changing culture is also an art and it can take time, as transformation programs do (5+ years?). So be ready, and start today. Or start tomorrow and get there one day late. Tic Tac, clock is ticking and the world keeps moving.
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