The insurance industry "ecosystem" has changed due to big data

Recently, Peter Haslebacher, Chief Operating Officer of SunGard Asia Pacific Insurance Business, came to China for a full schedule.

He has visited several senior executives of insurance companies in China to find out the feasibility of both parties to launch insurance innovation businesses based on the internet and big data analysis models.

"The Internet is quietly changing the entire ecosystem of the insurance industry from product design, marketing services, process reengineering, investment risk tolerance, and more." In an interview with 21st Century Business Herald, he said bluntly that more and more insurance in Asia Pacific Companies are experimenting with a wide variety of internet insurance innovations, even if the "convergence" of the two is by no means easy.

Simulation "Investment Scenario"

"21st Century": insurance products already have big data analysis genes, then, based on the Internet big data analysis model, but also to the insurance product innovation to bring much driving force?

Peter: Indeed, most insurance products are designed by actuary with various types of data, but these data were mainly used to improve the insurance claims liability and resolve operational risks. Based on the analysis of big data on the internet, insurers can add personalized investment risk tolerances to design more innovative products. For example, insurers can simulate tens of thousands of "investment scenarios" using Internet and big data analytics models to analyze the return on investment and claims in the worst-case scenario and how much impact insurance companies will have on the business risks and continuously optimize their own investment portfolios , Design high-yield personalized insurance products.

Recently, insurance companies in Europe and the United States have started to try to develop and sell insurance products with higher returns through Internet platforms. In the past, they tended to design life insurance products that were relatively stable in return.

"21st Century": Do you think the Internet may reshape the existing insurance marketing system sometime in the future?

Peter: Strategic positioning of Internet marketing services by many insurance companies in the Asia-Pacific region is to enhance their brand loyalty.

For a long time, insurance agents have been the key linkages between customers and insurers. Customer claims to find agents, agents often help customers solve the life problems, this offline marketing model as a consequence of the vast number of customers do not have much feelings on the insurance company, the agent can easily take away a job hopping client.

Now, with the help of the Internet, these insurers are starting to think about how to narrow their distance from their customers. Individual insurance companies in Singapore open cooking, childcare, home care and other channels on the official website to increase their frequency of interaction with customers.

There are individual European and American insurance companies learn from the technical advantages of cloud computing, customer and agent communication information stored up, to avoid customer loss. But I think this may not be able to retain the customer's heart, because it can not give customers emotional resonance.

Business process transformation

"21st Century": Internet to change the insurance industry ecosystem, the biggest difficulty is to transform the insurance company's business processes, how to carry out this transformation?

Peter: In the past two or three years, many European and American insurers have devoted a great deal of effort to exploring these Internet-based insurance products, but few have succeeded.

The reason for this, the insurer business process transformation and improvement put forward a very high challenge. On the one hand, insurance companies need to establish a rapid, efficient and reliable information response processing system within the insurance company to ensure that the customer information is received and executed in the shortest time without any error; on the other hand, the insurance company has the corresponding investment ability to guarantee Long-term sound investment return.

"21st Century": The global insurance regulatory tightening, the insurance company to create high-yield what are the challenges?

Peter: The tightening of the global insurance industry is mainly manifested in three aspects: the rigorous grading of insurance investment assets, some of the investment assets deemed safe before the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, including individual national debt with a debt crisis, the subordinate High-yield mortgage securitization products are excluded from the insurance company investable assets; the types of currencies can be traded are reset, some national regulatory authorities require insurers to reduce the position of certain monetary assets, the proportion of positions, because these currencies Facing a sharp devaluation risk; third, narrowing the scope of investment, some regulatory agencies in Asia Pacific countries want insurance companies to reduce the proportion of overseas investment.

One of the biggest challenges, or insurance investment assets severely graded. Often, high-risk assets correspond to high returns. However, as the global economy enters the era of low interest rates, insurers need to increase their holdings of high-risk assets in order to achieve high returns. However, in the case of stratified assets, how to obtain high returns is another problem.

It is foreseeable that if the insurance company's investment income can not continue to improve the situation, capital preservation and type insurance products will gradually withdraw from the market.

I also heard that the solution for domestic insurance companies is to buy non-standard assets with high yield and low liquidity. Perhaps, such investment assets also need strict grading and risk control, because financial risks often appear in the most easily overlooked part of everyone.