Digital technology has transformed the way insurers do business recently. Along with meeting the growing demand for easily accessible financial services, technological innovation contributes to growth and business development. It creates new trends, opportunities for growth in new and existing business, as well as improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. Consequently, the insurance market is currently in a key dynamic phase with business models changing drastically, along with consumer behaviour.

In Greece the majority of insurers use digital technology at a basic level to support customer experience. As competition is strong and consumers have become more demanding and less loyal regarding non-life products, firms are now putting particular emphasis on client retention. To this end, Interamerican has been one of Greece’s leading insurance companies as it continues to reshape its business in accordance with a new digital era.

[Interamerican’s] strategy focuses on simplicity by standardising processes, as well as creating simple and transparent systems

Clear cut goals
Having succeeded in its differentiation in the Greek insurance market, thanks to key investments in innovation and technology, Interamerican has an emphasis on internal process improvement, as well as to high quality customer service, by enhancing customers and producers’ experiences. “Interamerican’s brand ideal and shared goal is to improve peoples’ lives, making them feel safe at every moment in their life journey. This is our guide to the way we recruit, unite, build and inspire all the people that we touch with our business, from employees, to sales networks and customers,” said Chief Operations Officer G. Mavrelis.

As such, the company’s strategy focuses on simplicity by standardising processes, as well as creating simple and transparent systems, moving procedures from back to front office, creating a lean business through monitoring and capitalising on technological developments in order to reduce cost and create a customer driven culture throughout the organisation.

Additionally, the company develops advanced front-end portals for customers providing unique functionality for personalisation, a/b testing and supporting advanced digital marketing actions. There is also focus on data driven decisions and rapid execution, using advanced digital analytics, reporting and attribution modelling.

The launch and development of the direct-online insurance brand ‘Anytime’ is Interamerican’s most impressive success story and a major catalyst in its transformational process. The Anytime brand and concept of direct insurance was launched in 2006, during very premature market conditions. In 2008, its car insurance customer base was 2,000 policies and has recently surpassed 200,000.

In this respect, the product has revolutionised the way Greeks buy their insurance by offering simple, standardised, high value products and services, focusing on auto, health and home insurance. On the other hand, the creation of a loyalty club – offering special services and benefits to Anytime’s customers – has enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Amplifying the brand
Following this, Interamerican has established Assistance services, successfully handling more than 285,000 incidents per year and delivering a unique level of care at crucial times for the customer. Interamerican Assistance holds the first position overall in the Greek insurance market, contributing to the creation of a strong brand image, unique brand awareness and high levels of customer satisfaction. This particularly comes down to a unique infrastructure providing a differentiated value proposition to the market, while at the same time controlling claims and operational costs.

The more people operate in a digital world the faster it is needed to consider about handling big data for uncovering hidden patterns

Along these lines, the firm has also endeavoured to streamline its business through one integrated information system (OnE), which has simplified, standardised and unified products and processes across its business units. The automated process workflow has clear underwriting authorisation rules, a user-friendly web interface for policy issuing and portfolio administration, as well as better control of claims handling and reinsurance. This has improved efficiency across sell and upsell, increased sales, reduced cost and simplified procedures.

Close collaboration between business and IT in the implementation of various digital projects – such as CRM, e-mobile, use of social media as a service point, adopting cutting edge technology like telematics and virtual electronic office system ‘ask me’ – is helping to transform the company into a ‘new generation insurer’, aiming for operational excellence, through state of the art digital services to customers.

Needless to note that, the more people operate in a digital world, the more urgent the need is to consider how to handle big data for uncovering hidden patterns, unknown correlations and other useful information for decision making.

‘Genius’ is the first electronic underwriting system in Greece, which automates the process of risk assessment and policy issuance in life and health business. The use of Genius drastically reduces the productive time required of associates and simplifying – as well as accelerating – customer service. The system was designed in cooperation with major reinsurance organisations and, for the first time, is now available to sales associate networks worldwide.

In this respect, it is considered an innovation for the Greek and international insurance market, offering competitive advantages to both intermediaries and customers. This is essentially why Interamerican is considered an insurance leader at the forefront of the Greek industry.