Webinar
Case study presentations from session at ICMIF/Americas Annual Conference 2019
Building an innovative culture is key to ensuring the organisational agility needed to respond efficiently to change and seize new business opportunities in today’s complex world. Considering the cultural aspects of innovation, these case studies present how cooperative/mutual insurers are adapting their organisational capabilities and processes in order to create a culture that embraces and enables innovation.
Innovation fostered by the cooperative culture
Seguros Unimed is the insurance arm of the Brazil’s largest medical work cooperative and health insurance provider, serving 6 million clients in the health (37% market share), dental, non-life, pensions and life segments. Seguros Unimed has a culture of innovation embedded in the business model.
Its digital transformation is based on a culture of cooperation and innovation: top down for strategy, bottom up for culture.
The journey started in 2015, with a prize “inova saude” recognising and disseminating Unimed’s best practices based on digitalisation. In 2016, innovation and digital transformation were the drivers of Seguros Unimed’s next five-year strategy. In 2017, it implemented its digital innovation cell called “Stormia”. In 2018, manual processes were replaced by end-to-end digital operations. After 18 months, this digital project eliminated 1.54 million pages of paper documents, amounting to a saving of BRL 2.7 million (USD 0.5 million). 2019 then saw the launch of a cooperative welfare and financial platform with a digital broker.
The Stormia cooperative platform acts as a digital shared value ecosystem to facilitate and integrate the initiatives and innovations of the Unimed System, and in the future, of other cooperatives offering complete solutions. It focuses on providing customers with interactions on wellness, quality of life and financial protection, promoting collaboration and creating a communication channel. The model is entirely based on inter-cooperation- that is its cooperative differentiator.
Presenter:
Helton Freitas, CEO, Seguros Unimed (Brazil)
Digital transformation is a cultural transformation
Río Uruguay Seguros (Argentina) is midway through a three-year journey of transformation; currently in the process of learning how to navigate and effectively transform the business.
It is taking a “holacracy” approach to help it make decisions, with democratisation and an expansion of shared leadership (as opposed to a traditional leadership hierarchy). RUS is also providing digital training to all its staff through its internal training academy Universidad Corporativa (U-RUS), set up in 2017 to help the company overcome new market challenges by developing activities that cultivate individual and organisational knowledge and learning.
RUS is convinced that digital transformation will significantly impact the organisation. Mobility changes, AI, IoT, and increased life expectancy will have a profound effect. One of the challenges it faced was that innovation and technology were yet to be empowered at RUS.
Cultural change is led by the Board of Directors and management. They must lead by example, encouraging entrepreneurship, collaboration and innovation. The reorganisation of RUS includes a digital coordinator; new quality and customer-centric equipment; and a new leadership structure with the responsibilities for strategy, operability and materialisation.
In 2019, RUS founded the Incubadora RUS (RUS Incubator) to link knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs whose purpose is to improve the services of insurance activities. The incubator encourages collaboration with insurtechs and digital platforms, and provides collaborative spaces and ecosystem support for the cultivation of these new ideas and projects to drive transformation and innovation.
Presenter:
María Belén Gómez, Coordinator of U-RUS and Institutional Management of the Board of Directors, Río Uruguay Seguros (Argentina) and Hugues Bertin, CEO, Digital Insurance LatAm
Competitive advantage that goes beyond state-of-the-art technology or production capacity
Innovation is ultimately about improving the experience; through changing, modifying and renewing processes, products, services and technology. The insurance industry is also faced with the challenge of having to adapt for the digital transformation. Panal Seguros (Paraguay) initiated its new five-year strategic plan in 2019, with a focus on innovation to revolutionising traditional paradigms.
Its 2019-2023 strategic plan includes the goals to become the customer’s first choice, to give an introspective look, to build relationships with the customer, and to improve customer experience with the company.
Building the relationship with the customer means ranking and rating them, but also working on portfolio allocation by generation. In the end, gaining new customers is key to any company; but retaining profitable ones is even better.
Presenter:
Martín Pineda, General Manager, Panal Seguros (Paraguay)
More information
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