Zurich Insurance Group [SWX: ZURN]

Frank Verkerk is a seasoned executive and visionary leader in IT & Data, with extensive experience as a former CEO, CDO, CTO, founder, and VC investor. He excels in driving digital transformation, building digital assets, and spearheading organizational change. With expertise in FinTech, IT engineering, advanced analytics, and partnership management, he consistently delivers exceptional results. Frank Verkerk's mantra, "Pressure Makes Diamonds," reflects his ability to thrive under challenging circumstances.

Could you provide a brief overview of your role in enhancing the digital customer experience, particularly with regard to InsurTech elements?

As the Group Chief Platform Officer, my primary role encompasses the facilitation and enhancement of Zurich's customer, agent, and partner-facing technologies. In this capacity, my team and I collaborate with various stakeholders, both at the Group level and across localand regional teams. Our ultimate objective is to do our share ofensuring a superior customer experience bybuilding and delivering the technology to effectively implement new products and solutionsto help make insurance faster, easier and more convenient.

But we don’t tackle this transformation all by ourselves. I’ma firm believer that strategic partnerships with distinguished experts and companies are a key factor when it comes to building innovative solutions to enhance digital customer experiences. These collaborations include startups that we connect with through the Zurich Innovation Championship, Zurich’s global startup program.

How are you leveraging advanced technology to improve your customer journey?

In the context of digital customer experiences, while technology alone cannot resolve the challenges associated with providing excellent customer experiences, the right technology can make it possible. One key area where technology can be truly disruptive is the simplification of processes,ensuring that customer and partner journeys are as user-friendly as possible.

For example,technology can be deployed to simplify and accelerate the claims process. By facilitatinghow information is submitted and processed,portals and features such as single sign-on provide registered users with convenient and secure access to our self-service platforms on a daily basis. Additionally, the integration of AI can further enhance these efforts. AI enables us to rapidly assess information received from customers, including images of damages, resulting in faster response times. That’s whereinsurtechs come in, they can help us to further improve on this. For example, we’re working with one of last year’s Zurich Innovation Championship winners, LISA Insurtech, which has developed an insurance technology to settle insurance claims automatically through use of AI.

Another key use case we see for technology is to use it to improve the means of communication between customers, partners, and market facing Zurich contacts, such as claims officers, underwriters, or customer contact agents by establishing easily accessible digital channels. For instance, user-friendly portals or applications allow customers to find allinformation they need digitally without havingto make a phone call. There are also new ways for customers to get in touch with us, for example through video chat. Our“HelloZurich” solution has been rolled out in various markets and allows the customer to get in contact and start a video call with a Zurich employee of any market facing unit. Through HelloZurich, we aim to reduce the life cycle of a claim.

While Zurich is actively engaged in these areas, there is ample opportunity to leverage these technologies further. Overall, I believe that technological advancements play an important role on our mission to transform the insurer-customer relationship by building more meaningful and ongoing connections with our customers. The examples I mentioned above show ways in which technology can help to support this shift in how we engage with our customers.

What challenges do companies face today in making digital customer experience a reality?

While I see various challenges, the most important one for me is around the adoption of a truly customer-centric approach across all layers of an organization. Shifting the organizational mindset to consistently prioritize the customer perspective and include the customer viewpoint in every decision-making processrequires a cultural transformation.Everything starts and ends with the customer view – this might sound simple, but itis in fact a big undertaking. While Zurich has made a lot of progress, it is an ongoing journey.

Another significant challenge arises from the presence of legacy systems and technology, which tend to accumulate over time for long-standing companies like ours. Technology has evolved a lot in recent years, so working with and transforming legacy infrastructureis key tobe able to deliver an optimal digital customer experience. While this challenge persists within our industry, it is by no means unique to us. Managing and evolving legacy systems necessitates careful architectural planning and execution.

 Embracing a customer-centric approach and leveraging technology strategically can pave the way for significant improvements in the digital customer experience, ultimately leading to enhanced satisfaction and long-lasting connections with our customers. 

To be able to deliver a future-forward digital customer experience requires a specialized skill set. This brings me to my last point: Attracting and retaining talent.Every company is about its people and without the right talents, we cannot be successful, it’s as simple as that. Zurich is committed to offering upskilling and reskilling opportunities to our existing talent to help with life-long employability; and we are also continuously bringing in new talents with capabilities that are needed in the rapidly changing insurance world.

How do you gather customer feedback to analyze and then improve digital customer experience?

In my view, the essence lies in not only improving our own listening skills, but also then making use of the feedback we receive from our customers. We have numerous avenues through which we can gather customer input while adhering to our industry-leading data commitment at Zurich. The data insights we collect are crucial in understanding our customers’ ever-evolving needs. Additionally, we have implemented continuous customer feedback loops across all our business segments, encompassing measures such as net promoter scores and inquiries about both areas for improvement and positive aspects. Within my domain of expertise, which involves user experience and user interface design, we extensively engage with customer panels and conduct laboratory tests to evaluate the reception and comprehension of our designs. And, of course, we also work closely with partners and agents who oftentimes have an exceptional understanding of what customers are looking for, so they can provide invaluable feedback for us to further enhance the products we offer or how we can best approach and engage with our customers.

Considering the industry trends and ongoing changes, what transformations do you foresee in the future? How is your company proactively preparing to address these shifts?

While it’s impossible to predict the future, I’m observing variousemerging trends that are already gaining prominence and that I expect to further grow in importance in the near future. One significant trend is around new engagement models, both with customers and partners, predominantlydriven bychanging behaviors and expectations from younger generations who have grown up with platforms like Netflix and TikTok and, because of that, see and experience things differently. Closely linked to this shift I see another trend: the rise of the gig economy, which has resulted in the introduction of a suite of innovative solutions and services. This is where platforms become increasingly important, and we have also seen an increase insubscription-based and pay-per-use models. At the same time, as these younger generations have grown up around social media, this has increasingly turned into a new, preferred communications channel.

Another noteworthy observation within the insurance industry is the shift from delivering risk coverage to reducing and preventing risk. While insurance has traditionally provided customers with protection against potential risks, customers now increasingly turn to insurers to help them prevent an event from happening in the first place. I see Zurich as a leader in that space, and in 2021 we launched our global unit, Zurich Resilience Solutions, to complement traditional insurance products with services to help customers prevent and mitigate risk and to enhance the overall resilience of their businesses.

A final trend that must be mentioned is the growing impact of AI and automation. These technologies are more and more everywhere and hold immense potential across various domains. The application of advanced data analytics and AI capabilities is virtually limitless. Consequently, the insurance sector is embracing AI and automation to a greater extent, as evidenced by our own experiences in this realm. We are continuously leveraging these technologies to enhance the value we deliver to our customers. Looking ahead, I anticipate AI and automation to become even more commonplace in our industry, further augmenting our ability to provide comprehensive services and benefits to our customers.

With regards to what  Zurich is doing to embrace these emerging trends, there’s two additional things I’d like to touch on,besides the launch of Zurich Resilience Solutions.

On the one hand, Zurich runs the Zurich Innovation Championship, an establishedglobal startup program. This initiative, now in its fourth year, serves as a platform for insurtechsto submit their bold ideas and solutions, ultimately with the goal to work together towards the future of insurance. In the most recent round, we received more than 3,500 submissions, up significantly from previous years. This year’s 13 winners were announced in May and are now halfway through our four-months long accelerator.

On the other hand, Zurich places significant emphasis on embracing and encouraging workforce transformation. We have established various upskilling and reskilling programs designed to empower our existing workforce. These initiatives provide opportunities for continuous education, training, and the acquisition of new skills. By enabling our employees to enhance their capabilities and proficiency in specific areas, we ensure their growth and readiness to face future challenges.

What would be your piece of advice to fellow peers?

Firstly, don’t reinvent the wheel yourself – find the talents, partners and insurtechs that can help with embracing and accelerating digital transformation. It is essential to acknowledge your own strengths while valuing the contributions and expertise of others, fostering a culture of constant collaboration and innovation.

Secondly, start small!By that I mean tostart with buildingproof-points and getting support from within the organization; those can then gradually be scaled for real impact. I have learned in the past thatany attempts toaddress all challenges simultaneously or to embark on overly complex endeavors from the outset often lead to failure or significant delays.

Thirdly, don’t work in silos.Business, marketing and tech teams need to work together if they want to achieve the ambition to become fully customer-led.