Insurance will Plummet Without Customer Friendly Culture: Leadway

Insurance now and future, is driven by data and analytics and customer friendly business hub that is wired through digital channels relevant to consumers and sometimes, create instant customer satisfaction due to digital customer-centric trend..

This was the plum of the virtual training for journalist hosted by Leadway Assurance Company Limited, yesterday in Lagos. Capturing the future in the establishing topic, “Insurance For The Future In 2021” Leadway’s principal investment and strategy icon, Akinyemi Alebiosu with special focus on Nigeria said: “Data is the new oil and underwriting in the future is going to be driven by data and analytics. We are getting to a point where we will be using historical records, using robots, artificial intelligence in making decisions on pricing, type and extent of risk we take.”

Alebiosu’s screen showing the future, points insurance companies to the conurbation of large pools of data that should be analysed to make meaning and then, “prepare to create predictive models, at the end of the day make decisions that will make the product better.” He zooms in, “For example, in analysing the data, I want to know the pain point of our customers, what is their biggest concerns, how am I able to create products that meet these needs at the lowest cost because if I have a proper data I can predict incidents of loss and properly price and know what their price point is.”

What follows is this: “At the end of the day if we use data and analytics correctly in our underwriting process, the customer will be happy, the underwriter will be happy and all the stakeholders will benefit from the insurance ecosystem.”

In his digital mirror of future dimension digital displays, agents and brokers who ignore the digital exploration sphere are in the background while the social media channels are in the foreground. According to him, the current dominance of the former will be challenged if they ignore the digital platforms, as the new distribution channels will become prominent. But that chance hangs as dominance of brokers and reinsurance brokers in the developed market remains unchallenged because they have integrated the digital dimension into their operations. This is reinforced by the expected mega merger of Aon Plc and Willis Towers Watson (WTN) as would be largest insurance and reinsurance broking giants in the global market when their $30bn merger is finally approved by EU.

Therefore, he said companies that will fit tomorrows demand, including insurance broking firms, need to consciously gravitate to customers by creating digital channels that are customer friendly with sometimes instant satisfaction. He said Leadway is focused on that. “We want to see your problems, your risks and we want to solve them.”

For the executive director, general business, Ms Adetola Adegbayi, who always harp that insurers are in the business to pay claims as a first line charge, said the apathy to pure life products is misplaced attitude. She said life insurance helps people to build a legacy they will handover to those family members following after.

Adegbayi said pure life insurance is like buying money. Buying life insurance she reiterates is buying money and pure life gives better legacy for the family.