63% of policyholders prefer to configure personalized insurance instead of taking out a generic one, according to data from the latest report on the insurance sector by the consulting firm specialized in digital transformation and business strategy The Cocktail, as highlighted by its partner José Ignacio Albaladejo in the ‘Future Dialogues of Banco Sabadell with La Vanguardia’ session “The added value of insurance”, which also brought together the CEO of BanSabadell Vida, BanSabadell Seguros and BanSabadell Pensiones, Bernardino Gómez Aritmendi; the head of digital transformation at Barcelona Health Hub, Antonella de Ceano-Vivas, and the sociologist and customer experience consultant and expert in longevity and silver economy, Juan Carlos Alcaide Casado.
The experts agreed that technological advances, especially artificial intelligence (AI), are allowing insurance to evolve towards personalization.
The insurance sector has always been a “classic industry,” but now “it is evolving,” explained Gómez Aritmendi. In his opinion, “the term ‘insurance’ has become a bit outdated”, since it implies covering “a risk, when we currently talk about protection, with an idea of ??anticipation and prevention, and even financial and global planning, personalized and that covers the needs associated with immediacy.”
The Cocktail reports confirm that “one in three policyholders asks insurers for a anticipatory role,” understanding protection as “prevention,” agreed José Ignacio Albaladejo. The partner of this consultancy affirms that there is an “unstoppable trend towards a prevention approach, to try to ensure that the insured event does not occur.” Albaladejo sees an opportunity for insurers, since they inspire “trust.” For sociologist Juan Carlos Alcaide, “trust” is also one of the “key words” for the evolution of the insurance sector. “We are in a world where people, emotions, empathy and tranquility are very important,” he recalled.
The Cocktail partner sees opportunities for the insurance sector, which has the “trust” of its clients, “to occupy new territories” through a commitment to “cross-cutting”. The expert gave as an example that removals are included in home insurance, as added value for clients, as well as more services related to maintenance. Other areas in which innovation can be achieved in the insurance sector, as confirmed by the CEO of BanSabadell Vida, BanSabadell Seguros and BanSabadell Pensiones, are those related to “the climate emergency” to design solutions with greater added value, for example, for the agricultural sector, as well as those that are related to “changes in people’s lifestyles”, including mobility.
The “care revolution” is another pending issue for the insurance sector, lamented sociologist Juan Carlos Alcaide. “There are only 70,000 people with long-term care insurance,” a figure that he described as “totally marginal” taking into account the current context. Therefore, “there is an opportunity in the field of long-term care insurance that cannot be missed” and even more so when added value can be offered by applying technological advances so that they count in areas such as “home automation.” To achieve this, Gómez Aritmendi is committed to “the fusion of ecosystems” of insurance, technology and health, among others, with the aim that “technology is never dissociated from people.”
Antonella de Ceano-Vivas, head of digital transformation at Barcelona Health Hub, which has more than 500 members who innovate in the field of digital health, including startups, public and private corporations, universities and investors, who make up an ecosystem . In it, the insurance sector interacts with other actors related to health and technology, she maintains that “digitalization allows insurers to offer their clients close, immediate and personalized support in a scalable way. ”. The digital health expert also highlighted that “one of the ways to accompany the client in a personalized way would be to adapt to the stage of life they are in”, as well as their needs at all times, detecting if, for example, “ “He is more focused on savings, leisure or taking care of his health.”
The experts participating in the meeting are committed to innovation in the offer of services for specific population segments to evolve the insurance sector. Sociologist Juan Carlos Alcaide pointed out that “longevity” entails “new opportunities” to innovate in the insurance field. “We are facing a very important social change, since according to data from the National Institute of Statistics, in the year 2050, 50% of the Spanish population will be over 50 years old,” he recalled. “We live much longer and incomparably better. We are going to have a life expectancy of more than 120 years in two generations,” he insisted to encourage this rethinking of insurance for this stage of people’s lives that is becoming increasingly longer. Despite this trend, currently “life insurance currently covers up to age 70,” acknowledged the CEO of BanSabadell Vida, BanSabadell Seguros and BanSabadell Pensiones.
The trend to offer more services related to each insurance is also in line with the “demand of clients to receive more for less” in the current inflationary context, in the opinion of Alcaide, who also highlighted that “technology allows us to give more for less”. “Digitalization allows the democratization of insurance,” Gómez Aritmendi added as a solution to the needs of personalization, value-added offering and prevention.
The application of technologies in the insurance sector, the experts participating in the meeting agreed, must keep in mind that there is still a challenge around the “digital divide”, as Alcaide warned, since “70% of the segment of the older population feels that we are in a digital society by force.” “The majority of people over 74 years of age are not comfortable using smartphones,” he commented to illustrate the problem.
The head of digital transformation at Barcelona Health Hub highlighted that, increasingly, “services are being provided through smartphones and wearables that can monitor clients’ health indicators to help them in prevention and prediction.” De Ceano-Vivas stated that the technology facilitates the “prediction of possible future events” such as the “early diagnosis of diseases,” since “it is possible to identify patterns in the enormous volume of data currently handled.”
“The technology exists, but in order to achieve real results, the algorithms must be trained,” said Gómez Aritmendi, who revealed that “we are training them together, generating a virtuous circle,” especially since the popularization of AI. generative during the last few months. “After the initial euphoria, we are landing its use in increasingly tangible cases,” acknowledged the head of digital transformation at Barcelona Health Hub.
“Magic ends with AI,” predicted Alcaide, who also summarized its advantages in “4Ps: foresight, personalization, prediction and precision,” to which Gómez Aritmendi added “privacy,” as a challenge to take into account due to the need to “ preserve people’s data.” According to Albaladejo, we must also be aware that “the regulation of this privacy is different in each region of the world”, with Europe being a pioneer in developing it both in data protection and in AI or the use of facial recognition technologies.
To transform the sector, “instead of talking about home, life or automobile insurance” it would be necessary “to talk about the needs of each person, with a more holistic, personalized and value-added approach, taking advantage of technologies and recovering the extreme collaboration that was generated during the pandemic. We are facing an exciting challenge that will represent a paradigm shift,” recommended the CEO of BanSabadell Vida, BanSabadell Seguros and BanSabadell Pensiones to end the debate.
