“Insurers are late adopters of fintech”, said Mack Eng, Singapore-based executive vice president of Japanese insurer MSIG. So insurers bring in third-party fintechs to help speed up their transformation.
MSIG’s claims system alone involves three partners: DBS Bank, NCS (a robotics company) and Laserfiche (enterprise software). Their services may overlap, but MSIG is open to explore with different partners.
MSIG’s example is in line with industry trends. Sanjay Varma, director for Asia Pacific at vendor FIS, says financial institutions in the region are increasing the number of third-party collaborations.
FIS just issued a report that says only 47% of Asian companies with clear leadership in digital transformation say their technological capability is sufficient to meet their growth plans.
Varma says the pattern is for companies to hire outsiders who bring change to the corporate culture; then they build internal digital platforms; and finally they bring in third parties to fill the gaps.
Singapore goes robo
MSIG has travelled down a similar road. Eng was hired in 2018 just after the insurer embarked on a digitalisation campaign for Asia. “It’s critical that leaders set the right tone,” Eng said, to ensure the urgency of the task is communicated to all levels.
Since then the company has built a foundation for a new generation in core infrastructure, and followed by partnering with outside players.
MSIG’s regional strategy has been based on robotic process automation (RPA), deploying computerised tools to handle simple, repetitive, time-consuming tasks, in order to save on human costs and reduce processing errors.
Business units can select what is most relevant for them
Mack Eng, MSIG
NCS, a subsidiary of Singtel, has tailored two bots for MSIG. One is called Zac, which processes travel claims submitted online, giving customers immediate emails back to acknowledge when a claim’s been filed. It cuts processing time of claims submissions from 14 minutes to 3 minutes, a time savings of 70%.
The second bot is called Velma, which enters details about automobiles for policies covering fleets. The time to log vehicle information has been slashed from about two minutes to 40 seconds.
Hong Kong’s holistic approach
Zac and Velma have been introduced to MSIG’s Singapore and other regional markets, although not yet to Hong Kong. That market has taken a different path: “Business units can select what is most relevant for them,” Eng said.
MSIG Hong Kong works with Laserfiche, which provides software that manages the overall flow of information through the enterprise (this is known as enterprise content management, or ECM; Oracle and IBM are industry leaders in this space).
ECM analyzes all kinds of information, including emails, documents, and images, in order to redesign workflows (as opposed to RPA, which simply improves existing processes but doesn’t change their function).
“It’s starting from scratch,” said Alan Yue, MSIG’s I.T. leader in Hong Kong. “We digitize our claim service to make it basically into a clean sheet.”
Hong Kong customers can now upload their supporting information instead of mailing hard copies when submitting a claim. The firm says 80% of online customers have used this channel. The software now also confirms submissions instantly via email or SMS, and it can forward them immediately to authorized insurance brokers or agents.
It’s starting from scratch
Alan Yue, MSIG
ECM, in theory, should be a more strategic solution than RPA since it paves the way for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. ECM help companies transform data sourced from many places (including social media) into data that is structured, and therefore machine-readable for analytic purposes.
API -the payments piece
Finally, MSIG has partnered with DBS to enable real-time payments for claims that are approved. MSIG is the first user of DBS’s RAPID program, which launched in 2017. DBS customers can buy an MSIG policy on the bank’s website and enjoy real-time payment of claims, with DBS’s payment API integrated into MSIG’s claims process.
Having onboarded partners, MSIG now needs to make sure it stays on top of other relevant solutions in the market – not a simple task, given the ever-growing number of insurtechs and other tech providers. MSIG became a founding partner of startup accelerator Plug and Play’s insurtech platform in Singapore. Back in MSIG’s home market of Japan, other institutions are also joining this network, including Japan Post Insurance.
Eng says membership keeps the firm on top of emerging companies as well as mature vendors. MSIG has set up dedicated teams in Asia and Silicon Valley to manage its Plug and Play relationships.
