How sustainability and workforce transformation encourage innovation | Insurance coverage Weblog

The current 2022 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance coverage Awards are a strong, sensible illustration of the developments 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 gentle of things corresponding to a good labour market, ability shortages, rising human-machine interactions and hybrid work preparations. Each are additionally changing into key concerns for folks when choosing their insurance coverage provider of selection and/or a spot the place to forge a profession. 

Social, sustainable and accountable  

Accenture’s 2021 Insurance Global Consumer Study illustrated that sustainability in all types has develop into more and more essential for shoppers, with 67 p.c of millennial and youthful generations saying that sustainable services and products 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 means of constructive socio-economic practices, caring for underserved and susceptible communities.  

Built-in, proactive sustainability is not going to be doable with out implementing the fitting know-how. As our newest analysis Uniting Technology and Sustainability discusses, know-how is a key enabler for creating holistically sustainable companies and for that sustainability and know-how methods have to develop into tightly aligned. In truth, in Accenture’s Perception to Reality: Closing Stakeholders Consensus Gaps to Shape Sustainable Organizations we illustrated that 43% of executives point out accessing the fitting know-how on the proper price as a key barrier to creating sustainability targets. 

On this 12 months’s awards, we noticed how insurers are overcoming these challenges by connecting sustainability to their function and imaginative and prescient and utilizing applied sciences corresponding 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 actually the case with this 12 months’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 by means of an AI-enabled cell app. 

Marcin Kurczab – Head of Innovation Lab at PZU explains how the device got here to be: “When implementing the undertaking, we recognized the problem of low consciousness of pores and skin most cancers threat among the many staff of our company shoppers. Because of this, we provided them a easy and fast answer that routinely reminds them to carry out common self-examinations.” 

Over 3,000 folks registered within the app within the first months of the pilot programme, with 5 pores and skin most cancers instances recognized by the app and being confirmed by dermatological evaluation thus far. PZU acquired constructive suggestions from customers, who shared that the device made pores and skin most cancers prevention simpler and extra accessible.  

Kurczab provides, “Two folks informed us about their medical consultations, throughout which docs have been impressed by the effectiveness of the app, which proves its reliability. That’s our mission as an insurer – we’ve the distinctive functionality to guard and assist folks in dwelling higher and longer. It takes solely takes a minute for PZU prospects to test their pores and skin situation at residence and, if there’s a concern, to escalate this by seeing a health care provider. Analysis at such an early stage will increase the prospect of a profitable restoration.”  

PZU noticed a rise in buyer sentiment on account of the device, noticing a statistically important distinction within the analysis of PZU’s innovativeness (+13 p.p. as compared with the management group) and the notion of the corporate as trendy (+10 p.p. as compared with the management group) of their annual advertising and marketing survey.  

“It’s generally identified that healthcare companies are overloaded, and sufferers usually have to attend a very long time for a health care provider’s appointment and remedy. New applied sciences corresponding to AI have an enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare by addressing its most important 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 diseases which is able to lead to decrease mortality charges. Trendy AI instruments can act as a assist of docs throughout examination (there are already purposes with medical certification which might be prescribed by docs identical to medicines or different types of rehabilitation) or allow self-examination choices as a part of prevention – identical to our undertaking. AI doesn’t really feel fatigue, it’s higher in avoiding biases, and might see what is just not at all times observed by people. These options could make AI an inseparable component of medical prognosis sooner or later.”  

Workforce transformation  

Expertise is the lifeblood of the insurance coverage business. It’s only with the fitting assets and data that insurance coverage carriers will be capable to remodel and realise their imaginative and prescient.  

Nevertheless, expertise and expertise shortages are a rising concern inside the insurance coverage business. Talent gaps ensuing from the introduction of latest 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 Technology Vision for Insurance 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. However, optimizing the assets that guarantee a wholesome and productive workforce, no matter bodily location, may 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 means of the hybrid workforce, with an all-in-one cell software for Zurich staff 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 staff globally they usually deserve the very best and best instruments to assist navigate their work life. We initially launched the app in a number of Zurich enterprise items with a concentrate on workspace reserving however have come very far since and are going international this 12 months. With One Zurich, we’re turning our previous mannequin of functional-based digital experiences on its head. The place we beforehand had completely different platforms for, let’s say, HR or IT assist, now our staff have it multi functional place.”  

Liz Oswald, Head of Know-how Transformation, Zurich Insurance coverage Firm provides, “One Zurich goals to supply our staff with a holistic digital expertise. We often have interaction our staff by means of a number of channels corresponding to focus teams, interviews, polls and in-app suggestions types to grasp their desires, 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 staff to grasp 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 means of working. Escudero Sanchez explains, “Zurich has embraced the brand new post-pandemic means of working, together with providing expanded flex and distant working choices to staff. This mannequin creates many alternatives for each the corporate and staff on tips on how to keep related in a hybrid working world. At a tactical stage, the One Zurich app helps staff in managing their on-site days with user-friendly, visible instruments that permit 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 participating staff with related updates and actions after they matter most and to assist them really feel related regardless 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 component of attaining this will likely be offering our prospects, brokers, and brokers with trendy, streamlined and intuitive instruments and consumer flows that have interaction and delight them, and which might be tailor-made to their particular person wants. But it surely’s not sufficient to concentrate on innovating for our exterior audiences – all of it has to begin on the core! Our staff make Zurich. With One Zurich, we’re offering an instance for our staff by remodeling 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 complete 2022 Qorus Accenture Innovation in Insurance list. 

Get the most recent insurance coverage business insights, information, and analysis delivered straight to your inbox.

Disclaimer: This content material is supplied for common data functions and isn’t meant for use rather than session with our skilled advisors.