Across the global insurance industry, there’s a major push to improve efficiencies while providing the fast, seamless digital experience that today’s customers demand. Nowhere is this truer than Southeast Asia, where the majority of insurance firms are committed to digital transformation in 2024 – more so than in the European Union, United States or United Kingdom.
Southeast Asia leads the way
In a Novidea-commissioned international survey – Legacy Out, Digitization In: The State of Modern Insurance Technologies 2024 – of C-level insurance employees across the US, UK, Singapore, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia, it is Singapore that shows the greatest drive towards digital transformation.
The data shows that insurance leaders in Singapore are ready to make future-forward decisions about the technological shift required to better meet customers’ expectations of a modern, digital-first experience to stay competitive. In Singapore, 63% of insurance respondents expect to make a change to their core insurance management platforms by the end of 2024, compared with only 41% globally.
Easier to do business
Digital transformation in insurance is all about brokers’, carriers’, and MGAs’ ability to access and analyse data. In turn, this requires the use of a data-driven, born-in-the-cloud solutions that come with robust yet configurable reporting and data analytics tools.
These tools allow underwriters to use predictive modelling and machine learning algorithms to assess risk more accurately and set appropriate premiums. Insurance carriers and MGAs can enhance profitability while delivering more tailored products, utilising data analytics to instantly match or reject risks that fit their underwriting appetite. Brokers can identify lucrative cross-sell and upsell opportunities while also delivering a better customer experience.
Interestingly, Southeast Asian firms seem to place a heavier emphasis on the customer experience. In Novidea’s survey, 70% of respondents from Singapore emphasised the need for implementing technology that provides customer value, versus just 41% globally.
A win-win for clients and the market
Brokers can use data analytics to improve the client experience in multiple ways. For example, by being able to send prospective business to carriers who can leverage the same data to automatically determine if that business matches what they are looking to write.
Those brokers who can get a single view of their business using intuitive dashboards and automated alerts can also identify what lines of coverage their customers currently have and highlight coverages they are missing. Say a commercial client doesn’t have adequate coverage for cyber risks, for example, the platform would highlight that similar firms have bought coverage and alert the broker of that fact.
Brokers can use this same process to compare the coverage levels of multinational clients in different regions, and alert customers who lack the same coverages as their peers. As well as identifying these coverage gaps, they can also identify potential cost savings or newly developed insurance products that may offer protection clients didn’t even know existed.
Driving operational efficiencies in Southeast Asia
With a powerful, data-driven platform, brokers are able not only to set up alerts but automate them, so the analysis happens automatically. By spending less time manually managing insurance transactions, brokers can be more proactive in providing more valuable services to clients.
What’s true for brokers is equally true for insurers. Data analytics have revolutionised the insurance sector by providing insights, automation, and tools to streamline claims processing, reduce fraud, and enhance customer experiences.
For instance, insurers are streamlining claims processing by using predictive analytics to assess the validity and complexity of claims. By automating and streamlining the claims submission with data pre-fill, insurers can process claims more quickly and give a better customer experience as well as cutting costs.
Brokers in Southeast Asia are increasingly using data analytics to drive more revenue and work more efficiently across policy lifecycle, claims, and accounting functions, resulting in dramatic increase in sales, renewals, and operational efficiencies.
Instead of it taking weeks to produce a policy, brokers are now able to do so in minutes, resulting in a 95% faster time to profit for new partners entering the company’s guarantee business.
Connectivity and integration
Where a data analytics platform does not replace all of a company’s needs, it needs to easily integrate into a business’ existing tech stack. In the broking and MGA space this has become particularly important given the global rise in consolidation and acquisitions which has been impacting the Southeast Asian market.
Those merged entities often need to consolidate their technologies, and this is where the latest and best platforms and solutions make it simple to connect and integrate all operations of an insurance business via APIs.
From under-served to taking the lead
Respondents to our survey stated that Singapore has traditionally been under-served by technology, and organisations in the region are looking to turn this around and provide true value to the customer with their technology investments. What our survey results show is that Southeast Asia really is now leading the way on digital transformation in the global insurance market. The data analytics revolution is here, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see the rest of the world turning to Southeast Asia as the global digital transformation trendsetter over the next few years.
About the author: Ben Potts is the Managing Director UK and International at Novidea, and is tasked with driving the company’s growth and expansion throughout the UK and internationally. With an extensive background in the insurance industry, he has held various leadership positions at renowned companies such as Majesco, Xchanging, and Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT).
