The latest 2022 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards are a robust, 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 have to embed sustainability into their technique and worth proposition, they usually must embrace workforce transformation within the mild of things akin to a decent labour market, ability shortages, rising human-machine interactions and hybrid work preparations. Each are additionally turning into key concerns for individuals when deciding on 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 Shopper Examine illustrated that sustainability in all kinds has change into more and more vital for shoppers, with 67 p.c 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 threat administration mannequin, whereas on the similar time demonstrating to youthful shoppers that sustainability is a shared worth.
In a earlier sequence 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 via optimistic socio-economic practices, caring for underserved and susceptible communities.
Built-in, proactive sustainability is not going to be potential with out implementing the fitting know-how. As our newest analysis Uniting Expertise and Sustainability discusses, know-how is a key enabler for growing holistically sustainable companies and for that sustainability and know-how methods have to change into 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 fitting know-how on the proper price as a key barrier to growing sustainability objectives.
On this yr’s awards, we noticed how insurers are overcoming these challenges by connecting sustainability to their function and imaginative and prescient and utilizing applied sciences akin to AI to trace their very own ESG necessities or construct revolutionary 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 gained the class for its AI Pores and skin Most cancers Prevention device, which empowers prospects to entry pores and skin most cancers pre-screening rapidly and simply via an AI-enabled cellular app.
Marcin Kurczab – Head of Innovation Lab at PZU explains how the device 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 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 this point. PZU acquired optimistic suggestions from customers, who shared that the device made pores and skin most cancers prevention simpler and extra accessible.
Kurczab provides, “Two individuals informed 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 now have the distinctive functionality to guard and help individuals in dwelling higher and longer. It takes solely takes a minute for PZU prospects to test their pores and skin situation at house and, if there’s a concern, to escalate this by seeing a physician. Analysis at such an early stage will increase the possibility of a profitable restoration.”
PZU noticed a rise in buyer sentiment because of the device, 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 identified that healthcare providers are overloaded, and sufferers usually have to attend a very long time for a physician’s appointment and therapy. New applied sciences akin to AI have an enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare by addressing its major ache factors. AI-based instruments can tackle a variety of challenges by checking signs, optimizing healthcare processes, conducting triage but in addition predicting threat of a given illness (like cancers) or enabling early detection of such sicknesses which is able to lead to decrease mortality charges. Trendy AI instruments can act as a help of medical doctors throughout examination (there are already purposes with medical certification which can be 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 challenge. AI doesn’t really feel fatigue, it’s higher in avoiding biases, and may see what will not be all the time observed by people. These options might make AI an inseparable factor of medical analysis sooner or later.”
Workforce transformation
Expertise is the lifeblood of the insurance coverage business. It’s only with the fitting sources and data that insurance coverage carriers will be capable of rework and realise their imaginative and prescient.
Nevertheless, expertise and abilities shortages are a rising concern inside the insurance coverage business. Ability gaps ensuing from the introduction of latest 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 difficulty 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 Expertise Imaginative and prescient for Insurance coverage 88% of insurance coverage executives shared the idea that the distant workforce opens up the marketplace for difficult-to-find expertise and expands the competitors for expertise amongst organizations. Alternatively, optimizing the sources that guarantee a wholesome and productive workforce, no matter bodily location, may be difficult. Working remotely additionally makes a cohesive and collaborative office tradition tougher.
Class winner – Zurich Insurance coverage Firm
Zurich addressed the actual challenges which have come about via 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 they usually deserve the most effective and best instruments to assist navigate their work life. We initially launched the app in a number of Zurich enterprise models 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 outdated mannequin of functional-based digital experiences on its head. The place we beforehand had totally different platforms for, let’s say, HR or IT help, now our workers have it multi functional place.”
Liz Oswald, Head of Expertise Transformation, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm provides, “One Zurich goals to supply our workers with a holistic digital expertise. We frequently interact our workers via a number of channels akin to focus teams, interviews, polls and in-app suggestions kinds to grasp 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 observe up with workers to grasp what’s working effectively for them or what they want 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 how one can 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, 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 once they matter most and to assist them really feel linked irrespective 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 accountable and impactful companies on the earth. We all know {that a} key factor of reaching this can be offering our prospects, brokers, and brokers with fashionable, streamlined and intuitive instruments and consumer flows that interact and delight them, and which can be tailor-made to their particular person wants. But it surely’s not sufficient to give attention to 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 reworking 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 record.
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