The latest 2022 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards are a strong, sensible illustration of the tendencies shaping the insurance coverage trade. Sustainability and workforce transformation have gotten central to insurers for retaining relevance in a altering market. Insurers must embed sustainability into their technique and worth proposition, and so they should embrace workforce transformation within the mild of things resembling a decent labour market, ability shortages, rising human-machine interactions and hybrid work preparations. Each are additionally changing into key issues for individuals when deciding on their insurance coverage provider of alternative and/or a spot the place to forge a profession.
Social, sustainable and accountable
Accenture’s 2021 Insurance coverage World Shopper Research illustrated that sustainability in all types has grow to be more and more vital for customers, with 67 % of millennial and youthful generations saying that sustainable services are interesting. This curiosity stands to have a double profit to insurers, who can construct sustainable danger administration mannequin, whereas on the identical time demonstrating to youthful customers that sustainability is a shared worth.
In a earlier sequence on sustainability, I mentioned how we now have interaction with a wider definition of sustainability inside insurance coverage. Sustainability not solely pertains to defending the planet, however defending our future by means of optimistic socio-economic practices, caring for underserved and weak communities.
Built-in, proactive sustainability won’t be potential with out implementing the suitable expertise. As our newest analysis Uniting Know-how and Sustainability discusses, expertise is a key enabler for growing holistically sustainable companies and for that sustainability and expertise methods must grow to be tightly aligned. The truth is, in Accenture’s Notion to Actuality: Closing Stakeholders Consensus Gaps to Form Sustainable Organizations we illustrated that 43% of executives point out accessing the suitable expertise on the proper price as a key barrier to growing sustainability targets.
On this yr’s awards, we noticed how insurers are overcoming these challenges by connecting sustainability to their objective and imaginative and prescient and utilizing applied sciences resembling AI to trace their very own ESG necessities or construct revolutionary merchandise that add worth to clients, in addition to to society and the broader setting.
Class winner – PZU (Poland)
This was definitely the case with this yr’s winner of the Social, Sustainable & Accountable 2022. PZU received the class for its AI Pores and skin Most cancers Prevention software, which empowers clients to entry pores and skin most cancers pre-screening shortly and simply by means of an AI-enabled cellular app.
Marcin Kurczab – Head of Innovation Lab at PZU explains how the software got here to be: “When implementing the undertaking, we recognized the problem of low consciousness of pores and skin most cancers danger among the many workers of our company purchasers. Because of this, we supplied them a easy and fast resolution that mechanically reminds them to carry out common self-examinations.”
Over 3,000 individuals registered within the app within the first months of the pilot programme, with 5 pores and skin most cancers circumstances recognized by the app and being confirmed by dermatological evaluation to date. PZU acquired optimistic suggestions from customers, who shared that the software made pores and skin most cancers prevention simpler and extra accessible.
Kurczab provides, “Two individuals instructed us about their medical consultations, throughout which medical doctors have been impressed by the effectiveness of the app, which proves its reliability. That’s our mission as an insurer – we’ve got the distinctive functionality to guard and help individuals in dwelling higher and longer. It takes solely takes a minute for PZU clients to examine their pores and skin situation at house and, if there’s a concern, to escalate this by seeing a health care provider. Analysis at such an early stage will increase the prospect of a profitable restoration.”
PZU noticed a rise in buyer sentiment on account of the software, noticing a statistically important distinction within the analysis of PZU’s innovativeness (+13 p.p. compared with the management group) and the notion of the corporate as fashionable (+10 p.p. compared with the management group) of their annual advertising and marketing survey.
“It’s generally identified that healthcare companies are overloaded, and sufferers usually have to attend a very long time for a health care provider’s appointment and remedy. New applied sciences resembling AI have an enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare by addressing its primary ache factors. AI-based instruments can tackle a variety of challenges by checking signs, optimizing healthcare processes, conducting triage but in addition predicting danger of a given illness (like cancers) or enabling early detection of such diseases which can end in decrease mortality charges. Trendy AI instruments can act as a help of medical doctors throughout examination (there are already functions with medical certification which are prescribed by medical doctors similar to medicines or different types of rehabilitation) or allow self-examination choices as a part of prevention – similar to our undertaking. AI doesn’t really feel fatigue, it’s higher in avoiding biases, and may see what shouldn’t be at all times observed by people. These options might make AI an inseparable ingredient of medical analysis sooner or later.”
Workforce transformation
Expertise is the lifeblood of the insurance coverage trade. It’s only with the suitable assets and data that insurance coverage carriers will have the ability to remodel and realise their imaginative and prescient.
Nonetheless, expertise and expertise shortages are a rising concern inside the insurance coverage trade. Ability gaps ensuing from the introduction of latest applied sciences and growing digitization of operations, coupled with an ageing workforce and large retirement looming are significantly worrying. For instance, expertise administration (succession, planning, recruiting, retention, and coaching) was highlighted as rising subject by underwriters in The Institutes-Accenture’s 2021 underwriting survey.
A key rising problem and alternative for insurers is the rise of the distant workforce. On the one hand, the distant workforce opens up new alternatives for efficiencies. In Accenture’s 2021 Know-how Imaginative and prescient for Insurance coverage 88% of insurance coverage executives shared the assumption that the distant workforce opens up the marketplace for difficult-to-find expertise and expands the competitors for expertise amongst organizations. However, optimizing the assets that guarantee a wholesome and productive workforce, no matter bodily location, will be difficult. Working remotely additionally makes a cohesive and collaborative office tradition harder.
Class winner – Zurich Insurance coverage Firm
Zurich addressed the actual challenges which have come about by means of the hybrid workforce, with an all-in-one cellular utility for Zurich workers that simplifies the day-to-day expertise whether or not they’re at house or within the workplace.
Oscar Escudero Sanchez, Head of Digital Supply, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm discusses how the workforce approached the creation of the app, “Zurich has about 56,000 workers globally and so they deserve the most effective and best instruments to assist navigate their work life. We initially launched the app in a number of Zurich enterprise items with a give attention to workspace reserving however have come very far since and are going international this yr. With One Zurich, we’re turning our previous mannequin of functional-based digital experiences on its head. The place we beforehand had completely different platforms for, let’s say, HR or IT help, now our workers have it multi functional place.”
Liz Oswald, Head of Know-how Transformation, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm provides, “One Zurich goals to supply our workers with a holistic digital expertise. We often have interaction our workers by means of a number of channels resembling focus teams, interviews, polls and in-app suggestions types to grasp their desires, wants and preferences, and use these inputs to outline and prioritize a backlog of app options and user-experience flows. As soon as these are in manufacturing, we observe their utilization and comply with up with workers to grasp what’s working properly for them or what they want to see improved – after which we take these adjustments and enhancements into our backlog.”
This strategy aligns to a hybrid manner of working. Escudero Sanchez explains, “Zurich has embraced the brand new post-pandemic manner of working, together with providing expanded flex and distant working choices to workers. This mannequin creates many alternatives for each the corporate and workers on how one can keep related in a hybrid working world. At a tactical stage, the One Zurich app helps workers in managing their on-site days with user-friendly, visible instruments that enable to see when their colleagues are planning to come back into the workplace, e-book close by workspaces and handle their reservations. Extra broadly, One Zurich serves as a channel for partaking workers with related updates and actions after they matter most and to assist them really feel related regardless of which office mannequin they select.”
Workforce transformation doesn’t occur in a vacuum, however as a part of a deeper strategic dedication. Oswald concludes, “At Zurich, our ambition is to be one of the vital accountable and impactful companies on the earth. We all know {that a} key ingredient of reaching this shall be offering our clients, brokers, and brokers with fashionable, streamlined and intuitive instruments and person flows that have interaction and delight them, and which are tailor-made to their particular person wants. However it’s not sufficient to give attention to innovating for our exterior audiences – all of it has to begin on the core! Our workers make Zurich. With One Zurich, we’re offering an instance for our workers by remodeling their very own expertise and sharing our findings to tell our group’s broader digitalization journey.”
As these two winners present, a holistic dedication to sustainability and workforce transformation from the within can have a widespread, highly effective affect.
See the total 2022 Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage checklist.
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