The latest 2022 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards are a strong, sensible illustration of the traits shaping the insurance coverage business. 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 need to embrace workforce transformation within the mild of things resembling a decent labour market, talent shortages, rising human-machine interactions and hybrid work preparations. Each are additionally changing into key concerns for folks when choosing their insurance coverage provider of selection and/or a spot the place to forge a profession.
Social, sustainable and accountable
Accenture’s 2021 Insurance coverage World Client Research illustrated that sustainability in all types has turn out to be more and more necessary for shoppers, with 67 p.c of millennial and youthful generations saying that sustainable services and products are interesting. This curiosity stands to have a double profit to insurers, who can construct sustainable threat administration mannequin, whereas on the identical time demonstrating to youthful shoppers that sustainability is a shared worth.
In a earlier collection on sustainability, I mentioned how we now interact with a wider definition of sustainability inside insurance coverage. Sustainability not solely pertains to defending the planet, however defending our future by way of constructive socio-economic practices, caring for underserved and weak communities.
Built-in, proactive sustainability won’t be doable with out implementing the precise know-how. As our newest analysis Uniting Know-how and Sustainability discusses, know-how is a key enabler for growing holistically sustainable companies and for that sustainability and know-how methods must turn out to be tightly aligned. In actual fact, in Accenture’s Notion to Actuality: Closing Stakeholders Consensus Gaps to Form Sustainable Organizations we illustrated that 43% of executives point out accessing the precise know-how on the proper value 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 modern merchandise that add worth to prospects, in addition to to society and the broader surroundings.
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 instrument, which empowers prospects to entry pores and skin most cancers pre-screening rapidly and simply by way of an AI-enabled cell app.
Marcin Kurczab – Head of Innovation Lab at PZU explains how the instrument got here to be: “When implementing the challenge, we recognized the problem of low consciousness of pores and skin most cancers threat among the many workers of our company purchasers. For that reason, we supplied them a easy and fast resolution that robotically reminds them to carry out common self-examinations.”
Over 3,000 folks registered within the app within the first months of the pilot programme, with 5 pores and skin most cancers instances recognized by the app and being confirmed by dermatological evaluation thus far. PZU obtained constructive suggestions from customers, who shared that the instrument made pores and skin most cancers prevention simpler and extra accessible.
Kurczab provides, “Two folks informed us about their medical consultations, throughout which docs have been impressed by the effectiveness of the app, which proves its reliability. That’s our mission as an insurer – we’ve the distinctive functionality to guard and assist folks in dwelling higher and longer. It takes solely takes a minute for PZU prospects to test their pores and skin situation at dwelling and, if there’s a concern, to escalate this by seeing a health care provider. Analysis at such an early stage will increase the possibility of a profitable restoration.”
PZU noticed a rise in buyer sentiment on account of the instrument, noticing a statistically vital 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 recognized that healthcare companies are overloaded, and sufferers usually have to attend a very long time for a health care provider’s appointment and therapy. New applied sciences resembling AI have an enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare by addressing its predominant ache factors. AI-based instruments can tackle a variety of challenges by checking signs, optimizing healthcare processes, conducting triage but additionally predicting threat of a given illness (like cancers) or enabling early detection of such diseases which is able to lead to decrease mortality charges. Fashionable AI instruments can act as a assist of docs throughout examination (there are already purposes with medical certification which are prescribed by docs similar to drugs or different types of rehabilitation) or allow self-examination choices as a part of prevention – similar to our challenge. AI doesn’t really feel fatigue, it’s higher in avoiding biases, and might see what just isn’t at all times seen by people. These options could make AI an inseparable aspect of medical analysis sooner or later.”
Workforce transformation
Expertise is the lifeblood of the insurance coverage business. It is just with the precise sources and data that insurance coverage carriers will have the ability to remodel and realise their imaginative and prescient.
Nonetheless, expertise and abilities shortages are a rising concern inside the insurance coverage business. Ability gaps ensuing from the introduction of recent applied sciences and rising digitization of operations, coupled with an ageing workforce and big retirement looming are significantly worrying. For instance, expertise administration (succession, planning, recruiting, retention, and coaching) was highlighted as rising concern 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. Then again, optimizing the sources 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 way of the hybrid workforce, with an all-in-one cell utility for Zurich workers that simplifies the day-to-day expertise whether or not they’re at dwelling 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 one of the best and best instruments to assist navigate their work life. We initially launched the app in a number of Zurich enterprise items with a concentrate on workspace reserving however have come very far since and are going world 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 assist, now our workers have it multi functional place.”
Liz Oswald, Head of Know-how Transformation, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm provides, “One Zurich goals to offer our workers with a holistic digital expertise. We commonly interact our workers by way of a number of channels resembling focus teams, interviews, polls and in-app suggestions types to know their needs, 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 know what’s working effectively for them or what they wish to see improved – after which we take these modifications and enhancements into our backlog.”
This method aligns to a hybrid method of working. Escudero Sanchez explains, “Zurich has embraced the brand new post-pandemic method 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 the way to keep linked 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, guide close by workspaces and handle their reservations. Extra broadly, One Zurich serves as a channel for participating workers with related updates and actions after they matter most and to assist them really feel linked 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 some of the accountable and impactful companies on this planet. We all know {that a} key aspect of reaching this will likely be offering our prospects, brokers, and brokers with fashionable, streamlined and intuitive instruments and person flows that interact and delight them, and which are tailor-made to their particular person wants. Nevertheless it’s not sufficient to concentrate on innovating for our exterior audiences – all of it has to start out 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 complete 2022 Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage record.
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