The current 2022 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards are a robust, sensible illustration of the tendencies shaping the insurance coverage trade. 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 should embrace workforce transformation within the gentle of things similar to a good labour market, ability shortages, rising human-machine interactions and hybrid work preparations. Each are additionally changing into key concerns for individuals when choosing their insurance coverage provider of alternative and/or a spot the place to forge a profession. 

Social, sustainable and accountable  

Accenture’s 2021 Insurance coverage International Shopper Examine illustrated that sustainability in all kinds has develop 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 identical time demonstrating to youthful shoppers that sustainability is a shared worth.  

In a earlier collection on sustainability, I mentioned how we now have interaction with a wider definition of sustainability inside insurance coverage. Sustainability not solely pertains to defending the planet, however defending our future by way of optimistic socio-economic practices, caring for underserved and susceptible communities.  

Built-in, proactive sustainability is not going to be attainable with out implementing the correct 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 have to develop 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 correct know-how on the proper price 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 similar 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 setting.  

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 software, which empowers prospects to entry pores and skin most cancers pre-screening shortly and simply by way of an AI-enabled cell app. 

Marcin Kurczab – Head of Innovation Lab at PZU explains how the software 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 shoppers. Because of this, we supplied them a easy and fast answer that mechanically 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 obtained optimistic suggestions from customers, who shared that the software made pores and skin most cancers prevention simpler and extra accessible.  

Kurczab provides, “Two individuals advised us about their medical consultations, throughout which docs had been impressed by the effectiveness of the app, which proves its reliability. That’s our mission as an insurer – we’ve got the distinctive functionality to guard and help individuals in dwelling higher and longer. It takes solely takes a minute for PZU prospects to examine their pores and skin situation at residence and, if there’s a concern, to escalate this by seeing a physician. Prognosis at such an early stage will increase the possibility of a profitable restoration.”  

PZU noticed a rise in buyer sentiment because of the software, 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 survey.  

“It’s generally recognized that healthcare providers are overloaded, and sufferers usually have to attend a very long time for a physician’s appointment and remedy. New applied sciences similar to AI have an enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare by addressing its principal ache factors. AI-based instruments can deal with 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 can lead to decrease mortality charges. Trendy AI instruments can act as a help of docs throughout examination (there are already functions with medical certification which might be prescribed by docs identical to drugs or different types of rehabilitation) or allow self-examination choices as a part of prevention – identical to our challenge. AI doesn’t really feel fatigue, it’s higher in avoiding biases, and may see what just isn’t all the time observed by people. These options might make AI an inseparable ingredient of medical prognosis sooner or later.”  

Workforce transformation  

Expertise is the lifeblood of the insurance coverage trade. It’s only with the correct sources and data that insurance coverage carriers will have the ability to remodel and realise their imaginative and prescient.  

Nevertheless, expertise and abilities shortages are a rising concern throughout the insurance coverage trade. Talent gaps ensuing from the introduction of recent applied sciences and growing digitization of operations, coupled with an ageing workforce and large retirement looming are significantly worrying. For instance, expertise administration (succession, planning, recruiting, retention, and coaching) was highlighted as rising subject 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, could 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 residence or within the workplace. 

Oscar Escudero Sanchez, Head of Digital Supply, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm discusses how the staff approached the creation of the app, “Zurich has about 56,000 workers globally they usually deserve the perfect and best instruments to assist navigate their work life. We initially launched the app in a number of Zurich enterprise models with a deal with workspace reserving however have come very far since and are going international this yr. With One Zurich, we’re turning our previous 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 Know-how Transformation, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm provides, “One Zurich goals to offer our workers with a holistic digital expertise. We usually have interaction our workers by way of a number of channels similar to focus teams, interviews, polls and in-app suggestions kinds 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 nicely for them or what they wish to see improved – after which we take these adjustments and enhancements into our backlog.”  

This method aligns to a hybrid manner of working. Escudero Sanchez explains, “Zurich has embraced the brand new post-pandemic manner 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 best way to keep linked in a hybrid working world. At a tactical degree, 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 partaking workers with related updates and actions after 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 probably the most accountable and impactful companies on this planet. We all know {that a} key ingredient of reaching this can be offering our prospects, brokers, and brokers with fashionable, streamlined and intuitive instruments and person flows that have interaction and delight them, and which might be tailor-made to their particular person wants. However it’s not sufficient to deal with innovating for our exterior audiences – all of it has to begin 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 impression.  

See the total 2022 Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage record. 

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