Liberty Life Embraces Emerging Technologies
Isaac Pinielo | Monday October 16, 2017 15:49
This became evident during its sixth annual insurance business breakfast seminar held in Gaborone last week under the theme, ‘Digital Disruption and the Impact of Technology on Insurance Underwriting’.
The life insurer’s managing director, Lulu Rasebotsa defined insurtech, a portmanteau of ‘insurance’ and ‘technology’, as a term applied to the many segments of new technology that are disrupting the insurance space.
“These include technologies such as smartphone apps, consumer activity wearables, claim acceleration tools, individual consumer risk development systems, online policy handling, automated compliance processing, and more,” she said.
Disruptive technology applied to the insurance industry is finding its way into the mainstream of a previously traditional business.
According to Rasebotsa, it is through this new entrant to the industry that the pros and cons of ‘disruption’ have begun to play out, and that the battle for satisfied customers, lower costs and higher growth ensues.
“Throughout all this, one thing is for sure; resistance to what lies ahead is futile.
The ultimate winners will be those that are able to quickly let go of the past and embrace the future,” she said.
Along with the rest of the world, she noted, Liberty Life is under no illusions about the technological future of insurance.
She said as part of their 2020 strategy, they strive to be a market leader in technology by continuing to launch more innovative, market leading insurance products, and increasing the quality and quantity of their omni-channel touch-points.
“In 2016 we launched Liberty Online, our core insurance retail front end system through which our sales agents can onboard customer information effectively and efficiently, and can be used similarly by the back end staff at various stages of the process,” said Rasebotsa.
She added that they recently launched ‘Business-In-A-Box’, which she described as a ‘plug and play’ complete suite of a service especially useful in peri-urban areas, comprising of a laptop and other data capturing tools, for use by the agents remotely. She further noted that the company has taken a leap into social media, having launched its Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin accounts in early last year.
“Through these platforms we have easier on-boarding systems, access to insights, real time feedback and analytics, that feeds into our product development and enhancement processes to ensure responsiveness, and more tailor-made, inclusive products,” Rasebotsa said.