Insurance’s big questions answered

In an exclusive interview, Clemens Philippi, MSIG Asia’s Chief Operating Officer, shared his thoughts around our industry’s big issues - covering the current pandemic impacts, shifts observed in the Asian markets, the ongoing digital revolution, industry challenges and emerging trends in the near future. He also talked about our efforts to contribute to the society under our framework of Creating Shared Value.

 

Verbatim excerpts from the interview:

On digital revolution:

“The advent of new technologies and new data usage have open a long list of opportunities for insurers to think about new products to satisfy clients’ needs and also new distribution areas. If we look for instance at the eCommerce space, insurers are trying to partner with platform offer insurance solution at the point of sales – for example when mobile phone is sold online, we offer mobile phone protection or when a household good is sold, we offer warranty insurance with the sales. Another good example is in the automotive sector where new technology offers us pricing-based telematics, data or pay-as-you-go systems for the customers. For MSIG, I can say we are certainly very keen to participate in these areas, and we put in investments to upscale our staff and we invest in tools.”

 

On emerging consumer trends:

“From what we see from conversations in the market, in our own data and also in available research, it’s very clear and interesting that Covid has shifted in Asia a little bit the conversation around insurance from the historic dominating focus on pricing, to other topics like quality of insurer, fast payment, and coverage because it was in the press that sometimes, very limited coverage did not function in Covid 19 times. So, it was really a shift in the thinking of the consumers – how they perceive insurance and how they want to purchase insurance, not all on price but really on these other parameters. This is especially true for the health insurance… Covid 19 has shown to our customers, and to us as insurers observing the development, that the discussion is moving away from cash, towards accessibility – for example, access to doctors, access to good hospitals, mask, drugs and advice. Insurers have been put in a unique situation through Covid to move away from being players that purely pay and give cash to customers, to become more like a health and possibly a lifestyle partner for the customer.” 

 

On emerging trends for the insurance industry going forward

“Another topic for the narrow interpretation of ‘near future’ that we need to stay very focused on is about climate change, and the increased probability that our customers will be hit by events like floods and typhoon. We, as insurers, need to keep updating our modelling and underwriting tools as well as our capabilities in terms of advisory for risk management topics.”

Watch the full interview here.