HSBC Life
Award Category
Finalist Innovation
Question 1: Give a high level overview of your digital insurance innovation.
HSBC Life Hong Kong brings a new experience to its customers with the launch of a next generation insurance dashboard: • Giving customers round-the-clock access: the Dashboard is available on both Personal Internet Banking and the HSBC Hong Kong Mobile Banking app, giving customers round-the-clock access to details of their in-force policies online and through mobile banking. • Presenting in a user-friendly interface: The intuitive design simplifies complex policy information. With a few clicks, customers easily can search for policy details and make amendments such as updating their contact details, changing premium payment instructions, and withdrawing part of their policy value, to name a few. • Introducing more customer-centric features: • Live Chat and Mobile Chat – providing real-time assistance to answer customers’ enquiries, showing real-time policy values by leveraging on a new calculation engine • Policy reminders on the dashboard – helping customers stay on top of their premium payment dates, overdue payments, policy renewal and maturity dates. • Continuous enhancement: This new Insurance Dashboard established a platform for upcoming servicing functions to continuously enhance the digital experience for our customers in 2020, and beyond.
Question 2: How have you demonstrated a strong customer focus through your project?
Putting our customers front and centre was an indispensable part of our project. We undertook a number of ‘discovery’ activities in order to understand today’s customer needs and expectations, and we tested extensively with numerous rounds of customer research, held focus groups with customers, and guerilla-tested concepts with users: • In-depth customer focus groups: Two sessions of Voice of Customer were organised by external research consultant, with about 30 customers participated. During the sessions, customers were invited to experience different prototypes and share their preferences and suggestions for improvement on our dashboard. • Pilot testing: • Before our mass launch to customers, we also invited our internal staff members to participate in 3 rounds of pilot testing (17 x 1-on-1 interviews, 1 week of live testing across 6 internal teams, and 3.5 weeks of additional live testing across over 60 staff members and pilot customers). These interviews and surveys allowed for a conversational and observational deep-dive into expectations and behaviours of customers when engaging with a digital product, so that we could have the final tuning before our mass launch. At the same time, we also collected feedbacks and suggestions for future enhancement. o Customer nuances also became apparent through live observation of them, ranging from
Question 3: How did you use technology in your project – please expand on things like your use of analytics, AI, etc, as applicable.
Given the complexity of displaying 300 back-book products, each with a variation of 150 data-points that need to be displayed, the digital solution is designed to be modular, flexible, and have the ability to algorithmically generate pages on-the-fly by implementing the following measures: • Use of a modular approach: By starting with the policy summary page and built each section piece by piece, we ensure there is a configurable solution that algorithmically assembles the right screen for the policy. This flexibility allows us to pull in new products as soon as they are added, with no additional digital change required. • Technical integration: It involved developing a new flexible configurator solution, integrating with a completely new strategic data store, building a brand new set of APIs from insurance, and integrating for the first time with the digital customer application programming interface. • Building out a space across digital channels: With on-going and continuous enhancements to the dashboard, we strive to leverage one of our key competitive advantages – bank transaction data – to build out a space across the digital channels to further engage customers, raise awareness of their needs and educate them about the insurance products.
Question 4: How have you measured the results and growth of this project (if available please provide data on traction, partnerships, cost-savings, revenue, etc). All information shared in this section is kept confidential.
Given the complexity of displaying 300 back-book products, each with a variation of 150 data-points that need to be displayed, the digital solution is designed to be modular, flexible, and have the ability to algorithmically generate pages on-the-fly by implementing the following measures: • Use of a modular approach: By starting with the policy summary page and built each section piece by piece, we ensure there is a configurable solution that algorithmically assembles the right screen for the policy. This flexibility allows us to pull in new products as soon as they are added, with no additional digital change required. • Technical integration: It involved developing a new flexible configurator solution, integrating with a completely new strategic data store, building a brand new set of APIs from insurance, and integrating for the first time with the digital customer application programming interface. • Building out a space across digital channels: With on-going and continuous enhancements to the dashboard, we strive to leverage one of our key competitive advantages – bank transaction data – to build out a space across the digital channels to further engage customers, raise awareness of their needs and educate them about the insurance products.
Question 5: Please provide internal or external testimonials relating to the project if available.
Through our internal testimonials on the Dashboard, we were able to understand the genuine needs of users and improve what we would offer before the official launch: Testimonial 1 - “I will use the dashboard to change personal information, view information policy…see policy details.” By listening to users’ feedback, we understand that customers engage with their digital insurer for administrative and claims functions rather than actively engaging with the provider. Through this insight, we ensured that customers would be incentivised to engage with us more frequently via the Dashboard. One tactical action is having ‘Policy Reminders’ to help customers stay on top of their premium payment dates, overdue payments, policy renewal and maturity dates. Testimonial 2 - “I want instant help...and get supported immediately.” With this, we understand that customers expect convenience and speed for troubleshooting and servicing. Thus, we made sure to include ‘Live Chat’ and ‘Mobile Chat’ so customers could get immediate assistance.
Question 6: Is there any other relevant written information you would like to share as part of your entry?
Our innovative Insurance Dashboard reaps twin advantages: • For customers: It helps us serve customers better by giving them the transparency to view & manage their policies details whenever and wherever they need. • For HSBC Life: It drives us to operate more efficiently with fewer enquiries to call centres and frontline staff so resources can be optimised and focused on more complex tasks, such as providing superior customer services if customers feel the need to speak to us in person rather than via digital means. And through the data analysis on customer behaviors on dashboard, we have a better understanding of their preferences and needs, which helps us create products and services with enhanced customer experience, loyalty and advocacy. Digital innovation is not solely about replacing the human aspect of our services, but giving our customers the option to interact with us in the way they feel most comfortable, whether it is via digital or face-to-face means. All in all, HSBC Life strives to place customers at the heart of everything – including our business operations, processes, and new technological innovations.