The Digital Advisor
Editorial by Hugh Terry
One of the main reasons that I started The Digital Insurer in 2012 was when I realised that the iPad was a superb tool to facilitate the agency and bancassurance sales of insurance in my home region of Asia. So the Digital Advisor is a subject close to my heart.
What we are seeing is a quest to either digitise the human-led sales process or alternatively to build new digital processes that have “just the right amount of human”!
In his thoughtful article, Deno Fischer from KPMG, reminds us that the process needs to be designed for the customer and hence there is no one size fits all approach. He also emphasises the importance of ongoing learning and a certain amount of patience – digital advisors are not created overnight and require a multi-faceted technology and change management approach.
Rick Huckstep, in his article, takes a look at two of the newer digital advisory models – Sherpa and GetSafe. The Sherpa model looks to gather risk profile information and provide solutions on a wholesale basis and the GetSafe model offers a “single insurance policy for life” concept that allows new risks to be added across all traditional lines of business. Rick points out that both are offering club type concepts and disintermediating the primary insurance carrier. The other common feature is that both are also learning that the key to relationship building is trust and this doesn’t involve the complete elimination of the human touch.
In Asia, the advance of technologies such as tablets and more recently digital marketing tools have started to swing the pendulum for sales of life insurance to a digital first approach that will enable new ways of using human advisors more efficiently. In particular, the cost of customer search should start to fall significantly which will improve productivity and start to reduce the high level of acquisition cost that is built into products. So there is a win-win-win here for professional advisors, insurance companies and customers. The only “lose” will be the faster transition from the part-time agency models that rely on physical relationships and family networks as the primary source of lead generation. Many companies are at the early stages of their digital transformations and need the commitment to continue.
I hope you enjoy reading this month’s edition of InsurTech Insights sponsored and supported by KPMG.
Yours digitally,
Hugh Terry
Is the rise of the digital advisor the new insurtech game changer? - By Rick Huckstep
As a backdrop to this article on the digital advisor, let me take you back nearly 2 years. In December 2015 I made this prediction in my top 10 for the coming year (this was number 4). At the time this was greeted with an “easier said than done” tone from those who posted comments. But my faith in the prediction was based on conversations I’d had with my own children. All three of them are digital savvy millennials
KPMG Perspective - Segmentation in the digital age: How customer expectations drive effective technology strategies - By Deno Fischer
Insurtech. Robo advisors. Apps. As technological innovation advances, new “must have” technologies enter the insurance ecosystem at an ever-increasing pace. Such technologies can offer insurance carriers with clear advantages—in the right situations. Yet all too often discussion around use of the technologies such as robo advisors is binary, pushing for insurers to either advance and fully embrace innovation