The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rohit Nambiar, the group Chief Executive Officer at Tune Protecy Group about what it takes to be an innovator and what role technology plays.
Michael Waitze
Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and investors a platform to discuss how technology is reshaping the insurance industry in Asia and frankly, in the whole world. Our guest today, we are very lucky to have Rohit Nambiar, the group Chief Executive Officer at Tune Protect Group. Rohit, it is awesome to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Rohit Nambiar
Great, Michael, and I’m excited to be on the podcast as well. I’ve heard your podcast quite a few times. There been some great ones. I like the one with Walter in particular, because we have similar aspirations.
Michael Waitze
Yes, the show with Walter de Oude is really, really great. The stuff that he’s done, literally from scratch with SingLife is very impressive. So I’m sure you do have similar aspirations and we’ll get to that in a sec, too.What do you think, is the biggest trend in insurance and InsurTech in Southeast Asia, frankly, in the whole world?
Rohit Nambiar
I think InsurTech has gone through its own evolution. But I think today the biggest trend for me, I think I will put it into three buckets. The first one is, I think people have realized, we focus too much on tech and we didn’t focus on the very basic aspect, which is we are doing it for the customer. So now a lot of players are going back on how can I simplify the customer experience, which is why the very basic of InsurTech is here. I remember in my past life, one of my bosses from AXA, told me, You don’t innovate for fun, you innovate, because you want to do something for the customer. So, you know, I think that’s reality is hitting both the insurers and the insure tech players. The second one is I think insurers in the beginning had gone through two phases, I worked for a large multinational before, we went to two phases, first, we looked at them as a threat. Later, we looked at InsurTech as, “Oh, they’re not gonna make it”. Then we looked at them as “Oh, they’re tech providers, they don’t understand our business”. And I think the other side in InsureTechs also went through a journey where they said, I’m going to take your business away to, you know, every customer is going to come and boycott insurance in a particular way to now we’ve come to this reality of saying, you know what, we just need to coexist, I need you because you have certain skill sets, you need me because I have certain, you know, strengths, and we come together. The third aspect for me in InsurTech is tech has been over glorified. But culture has been under, you know, given very little importance. And that’s why you might see my trends are not going to tell you, oh Big Data is striving, AI is striving, I think those are all enablers, for me, it’s all about culture, the minute or when I get a job, a new job every time I’ve moved quite a few times within AXA now as well. Always it’s about getting the right culture, getting the right team, getting that ability to move forward faster and leaner. And that’s what we’re trying to do in Tune as well. So for me, those are the three key trends or key changes I see happening in this industry.
Michael Waitze
So this is a really important point. And that is that culture. We talked about this on another sheet, right? Culture eats strategy for breakfast all the time. It just is what it is. I didn’t make that up. And actually I use that as a title for one of my podcasts. And I got I got yelled up because somebody actually trademarked that phrase, but I’m using it again, because it’s really true. What do you do, when you go into a new organization, whether it’s inside of a big company like AXA or just a smaller firm like Tune? What do you do to try to first suss out what the culture is? And then second to sort of shape that culture in a way that you prefer?
Rohit Nambiar
I have gone through all the certifications, but I will just tell you that I’m not a big believer in these fancy terms like scrum and, you know, agile technology, you know, I believe I’m an agile method, I’m an agile mindset guy, but I don’t believe at all. So the minute you know, these large transformation heads come in and tell me, you know, now I’m going to set up this whole philosophy this whole methodology. I’m like, you know, guys, you’ve already lost half 90% of the organization’s the guy who is doing claims at the frontend, his problem is how do I do 70 claims in a day because that’s what he’s being measured on. I love what you know, Tony said right? Don’t Measure AHT, which is what we all measured average handling time, measure average happiness time. So you know, but that’s the problem, right? The industry has problems. So I go back to three fundamental points that I do when I take a new job. The first one is always assess the people. And I look at who are those people in the organization who can take us forward. So who are the promoters, and who are the likely detractors, and who are the ones who are sitting on the fence, the fence sitters can go three ways. They can remain fence sitters, they could become promoters, they could become detractors. The key is to identify that core group of promoters, and then build a culture around, how can we simplify things, a quote that I always repeat, and I think the team’s knowing me get fed up of that, is to make things complex is very simple. Just put an underwriting, operations, claim, compliance, and risk person in the room, and you’re basically dead, right? You’re not launching anything. But to make things simple, is fundamentally complex. Because you have to challenge regulations, you have to challenge the board, you have to challenge status quo, you have to take a lot of calculated risks in life. And that’s why people don’t want to do it. And, and the second thing I always speak about, and I do speaks, talks about this recently, I have a good friend at the large telco, I actually spoke to the CXO apprentice group, and actually spent most of my discussion on my failures in life, I said, I can write a book of my failures, I will struggle to write a chapter of my success. I’ve been on the brink of being fired many times in my career. And that’s something I tell people, you know, don’t look at, oh, you became a CEO at 37? No, there’s a story behind it, that I could have been fired and be no one as well. But I think that’s where innovation, the ability that culture to set in the company, we need to fail fast, we need to accept failure will happen. Of course, you don’t go in with a project saying this is going to fail. But I in my head know, nine out of 10 projects I’m launching this year are going to fail. But I’m going behind that one project, which will take me forward. The third aspect is for too long, our industry is gone behind lag KPIs. The minute I do a project people ask me, so how much top line? How much bottom line? How much combined ratio? Will you improve? For me, I look at something else. More importantly, I look at what I call lead KPIs. How much is my site claim cycle timing? How fast is my policy issuance? What is my response time to a customer feedback or complaint on social media? What’s my bounce rate in the consumer experience on my website, that’s what I look at. That’s what I’m more keen on. Rather than lag KPIs, which of course, are measurable. But for me, that’s why it’s called lag KPI because it takes time to float.
Michael Waitze
Yeah. And also, it’s a look backwards as opposed to look forwards. I want to ask you this, though. What made you feel like or what made you think that you were almost about to get fired? And is that was that like part of your strategy to push the envelope? Do you know what I mean? To try to make things better? So you’re just like, I’m going to do it. And if I fail, and I get fired for it, I’m not happy. But I understand. And I’d rather push the envelope forward, rather than just sit here and do the status quo. Is that is that the idea?
Rohit Nambiar
So no offense to any, any peers right? But one thing I learned when I was 10 years back in this industry was it’s a pyramid. It’s a pyramid, it’s meant to be a pyramid. And when you’re on the top, you have very few jobs to be at the top. Because you have only 14 insurers in Malaysia, you have only X number of insurers. The market talks the regulators talk. So if you fail, you screw up bad. You’re pretty much done with the pyramid. So obviously, when you are on the other side of life, you don’t want to take risk. You don’t want to unsettle anybody. And then there is obviously the shareholder pressure of today’s value versus tomorrow’s value. And should I touch what is coming in today and not worry the Nokia moment as I call it? For me that realization was there that this industry has been a sleeping giant for too long, banks moved probably a decade before us. I always say that, in general, the more than a decade before us, the other industries moved far before us. I think pandemic woke us up, there was things happening before but suddenly what happened in the pandemic was all the companies who had 70% of the business coming through agency, 60% coming through banassurance said, geez, how am I going to sell now? You know, I have no customers I have no meeting not one. So suddenly all this question of is there cybersecurity risks to doing this technology, can you guarantee there will be no cybersecurity incident? You know, these are some of the usual discussions we hear, if I move digital do you think a customer will be lost in this whole conversation, that’s all gone out of the window today, because now we are all saying, You know what, I need business, otherwise I won’t survive. So if the customer is ready to do it digitally, just give it to them digitally. My personal belief has been, there is no one size that fits anyone. In my own house, my wife and I buy financial products very different for sure, very differently. So you know, how can we have one size that fits all? So I think that’s been my leading light, if I may say so saying that this industry needs disruption. This industry needs simplification. And the sentence that I always said, If you really want to innovate, be ready to be fired. That’s the only way you’re going to innovate. Otherwise, you’re just doing a little bit stuff here and there saying you’re innovating, which you really aren’t,
Michael Waitze
I think that’s going to be the title of this episode. Actually, ifyou want to innovate, you’d be ready to get fired. I love it. I want to ask you about your, your view and your perception and maybe your definition of digital transformation at scale, particularly as it relates to the insurance industry. What does it really mean?
Rohit Nambiar
So what it means is, I think one of the, you know, with insurance business, especially general insurance business, there are essentially two outgoing factors, right. One is claims the other is expense. Claims takes forever to come true, because you don’t you most people will tell you, you put in an action today on claims is not going to come through in the next six months. It’s very rare for it to come through in the next six months, because claims has a cycle time as a certain maturity curve, etc. Expense is much more straightforward. And in today’s world, when I say digital transformation at scale, for me, it’s all about how much more can my expense ratio, it doesn’t mean expense, how much more can my expense ratio, improve of the organization, which means I’m becoming much more efficient. It doesn’t mean cutting costs. And this is a common debate I have with financial controllers, boards, etc. And I’m quite blessed to have a board which thinks differently today. It’s always a conversation I have, which is oh, things are, you know, let’s cut costs. And what happens, I’ve seen it in my past life, you cut, cut, cut, and then you suddenly want to grow back, it’s not gonna happen, you don’t have a silver bullet that you just, you know, shoot out of your gun, and it goes and hits what I want to hit, say with claims, I think there are fundamental changes we can bring in because you look at motor insurance 60% of your claims, claims or even 70% in some countries. So if I can bring in an improvement in my wastage, in my fraud detection, it fundamentally, not only does it save costs for me, that is, for me an even more important thing, I go back to the customer. When our fraud detection improves for the industry, we will not treat every customer as a fraud. Because today, what happens is everyI don’t know
Michael Waitze
They’re being treated like a fraud. Right? But they’re not. So they’re wondering why. Why does it take so long for me to make the claim I went to the hospital, I had the accident, I did what I said. And the reason why is because of the efficiency, I think around handling that claim has to be so fastidious, because otherwise the fraudsters will get through Is that what you’re saying?
Rohit Nambiar
Exactly. And the second thing is, what happens is in the past, and it’s gotten much better. In the past, I didn’t have a mechanism to identify if this customer has a greater propensity to a fraud claim or not. So what happened is all the 100 claims I went claiming, I treated them as suspicious fraud. So what happened over a period of time is this industry became so technically focus, the customer in the whole conversation was completely forgotten. But what now technology is helping us is with obviously fraud detection engines with you know, robotics process automation with much more sophisticated AI, is I’m able to probably some companies claim higher 70% of my claim, I’m able to say you know what, don’t even think about it just pay just give the customer the best explain. The remaining 30% is probably put through a bit more of a process. Ideal world it should be even lower. But the problem in most industries is we still don’t know what’s a real fraud rate. I read a research which says Uk 15% of claims could be fraud in some, you know lines of business. I’ve read in Asia, it could be 5- 6% most of us do not detect more than 2 or 3 %, so i dont know if that 5 or 6 % is a real number because we are just estimating or guesstimating .
Michael Waitze
Can you tell me how tech enable fraud or how that change in the last, you know particulary in the upcoming insuretech and the businesses out there is getting so good at detecting it , using this enabling technology that you mention? Or is it still really difficult?
Rohit Nambiar
I think there are three parts, one is the change that happen in the people mindset, again that do not start treating every claim as a fraud, and i dont blame the people because over a period of time , its how it becomes because they didnt know how to identify a good claim or a bad claim. I give you a very good example, an emotional example in my past life. There is a 27 yearsold single breadwinner in the family, he passed away, his mother came to me, not in my current company, much earlier , 3 to 4 months shes been running around trying to get her son’s claim and she doesnt work, and then i asked what happened? and i had the conversation with the reinsurence as well on this one , and i was told the person here gave a death certificate , the person gave a photo proof in the newspaper which was required but here we insist on burial certificate and in malaysia burial certificate is quite complex to get, it can take up to 6 months to get it , maybe easier, but thats what i was told and this person told us, you know what? i dont have the capability to wait for 6 months and then when i asked my team, they say its the reinsurance that insist on the burial certificate and then we go to this loop it’s me versus you versus you versus me. And then we find out there was one claim in Singapore, which happened with a customer in another country of Asia, where they faked to death, and the burial certificate is the way they cought it. So you can see how things have gone. So traditional Now coming back. So one is the mindset change. The second is what technology data, I’ll give you a very real example, no fancy technology, I’ll give a very simple example. What we found in my past life was 70, claims on an average was being done by one claims assessor. So basically, they treat this as an item there’s no emotions, no analysis, there’s just straight treating this as an item. So what we did was we put a robotics process automation, which basically had a simple rule, which was built in, there were about 12, or 13 rules that were built. If these rules did not hit, they basically the claim got approved, we had a second robo kick in, which then basically did the payment of the amount as well. So when the same claims guy came in next day morning, on an average his claim had come down to between five and 12 claims per handler, versus 70, which meant, now suddenly, he’s only he’s really doing customer service, he’s really doing fraud investigation, and not you know, going into he just doesn’t know kind of a situation. The third one, which we are doing as well is we provide simplified claims access to our customer. At Tune Protect, for example, a customer can just go on our mobile app, or can go on our website, and just upload the documents, right. And then what happens is, obviously over a period of time, with the help of AI with the help of technology, we can start reading those documents, we can start reading those data and become much more faster. Because the claims flags will tell you You know what, this particular customer group has zero propensity to claim more probably, you know, very little propensity to fraud. So it’s only the red flags that needs to be watched. But with AI with as with everything, I would just give a normal warning. I’m a big believer in it. But I’m sure we’ve all heard this, you know, funny story of a twin where one twin had 30% higher premium than the other one. And when they went and asked the insurer nobody could answer it. And apparently, then they were asked, you have to answer it. And the model, over a period of time found out that someone who has a better credit rating has a better claims ratio. So one of the brothers had better claims, better credit rating, because of it she got a big discount. Obviously, that wasn’t great between the two brothers. But then coming back to the conversation, again, as insurance, we always need to be on top of what technology is doing, and obviously not become a slave to it.
Michael Waitze
You mentioned a lot that used to work at AXA. Right, and AXA globally has 120,000 people in it. And when you move from a company with 120,000 people globally to one now I don’t know Tune Protect us what 200 300.
Rohit Nambiar
Yeah, 550 people.
Michael Waitze
What do you take from running a gigantic business into running, I won’t start small, it’s not small but into running sort of leaner business, from your previous experience into Tune to maybe help it grow or make it bigger or whatever you’re trying to accomplish, what do you take with you?
Rohit Nambiar
First things I will tell you in efficiencies everywhere, whether it is 120,000 people being inefficient, which just means you could put more people to do the same work, or whether it is here where less people are doing more work, which means they have no work life balance, it’s everywhere. And you ask the same question saying, Why do you do this process this way? They say the regulator said so. And then when I asked the usual question, can you show me where the regulation is written? They say, Oh, it’s actually my view of the regulator. Actually, many times, you know, we complicate life far more than a regulator wants us to. And that’s complex enough. Right. So anyway, coming back to your question, what do you take? I think it goes back to the three simple philosophies. One is, what what is the What is it that we are working towards? At Tune we came up with this new vision, three months back, two and a half months back, where we said, Our vision is to be a lifestyle insurer that everyone loves. Why did we come up with this very simple. Millennials, xennials are the consumer groups who are lend itself to newer age, you know, technology is newer age methods of, you know, communication. The age group above that, there are, of course, some exceptions, but it’s very difficult to break through because they’re used to a certain brand for 30, 40, 50 years, it’s very difficult to break through. So what that’s why we came up with this, where we are focusing on their lifestyle. So we are focusing on health, mobile phone, which is the most important for them and travel. So we built everything around the lifestyle. The second one I bring in, is I think each organization has a strength. And what Tune Protect has a strength, I’ve always said, Guys, let’s be practical, we can’t compete with the Allianz, the Axa, Generali, the Zurichs of the world. But where we can take them on is our speed. And that’s why one of the comments I’ve built within the company and the market, is I want to be the fastest insurer for any partner to deal with. And if I’m not fast enough, please come and tell me. And I will ensure that I’m faster than anyone else, because that’s my biggest difference. The third one, obviously, is I think that’s fast becoming one of our strenght is because you have limited resources, I think you tend to automatically prioritize far better, because you just can’t win every battle. So you got to pick your battles. For that reason, we came up with three lines of business we want to focus on. So we said, You know what, we’re going to focus on lifestyle insurance, we’re going to focus on SME, we’re going to focus on health, everything else is not a focus for this organization. And we will build our tech, we will build our insurance, we’ll build our reinsurance around these two lines of business.
Michael Waitze
And so Asia has notoriously low penetration, right? For insurance. What are you doing as a firm? differently? I guess part of this thing is the speed the stuff you just talked about, and focusing on the SMEs to try to mitigate this. But do you think some of the people to whom I speak say it’s really just a GDP per capita issue and that as GDP per capita continues to grow, which it will do in Asia, particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines is just going to keep growing secularly. Right. Is that going to be the driving force behind the adoption of insurance more than anything else?
Rohit Nambiar
For sure, of course, that will help. But I think there are three parts to this conversation. The first one is there is the affluent segment, who generally are oversold insurance today in our part of the world. And if you look at most penetration figures, they’re actually inflated in my view, because of this group of consumers. There was a study with said an average affluent Malaysian consumer has between six to seven policies. per person, right. So obviously, it’s very,
Michael Waitze
if you average it out for everybody else, it’s a lot higher than it’s exactly. I would make the case that GDP per capita is the same way if you look at Bangkok, I live in Thailand. I would almost guarantee you that the GDP per capita in Bangkok skews the GDP per capita in the rest of the country, which is obvious, right math, average math mean math is not hard to do. But again, sorry go ahead
Rohit Nambiar
So the second part is, so that group of consumer will automatically buy insurance. The second group of consumer which is millennials, young professionals, people who can buy insurance. They do not buy enough insurance. There are three reasons for it. One they find insurance It’s very complex to they find insurance too expensive lastly, they don’t trust insurance. It’s such a sad story to say that research after research says healthcare and insurance are always two of the least trusted industries in the top five, least trusted industries in most countries, because we’ve made it so complex. So that’s why what I’m trying to bring in, or what we are trying to do it today is to say, our products can be bought in less than five minutes, it will be that simple. It could be bite sized, it could be a little more comprehensive. But we want to follow the Airasia philosophy, which is, if you want to buy a seat, you just buy a seat, which seat you sit in, or what food you eat, you pay and you take it. So the same way, we want to sell you a simple health insurance product. But if you want to buy more around it, of course, you can pay for it and buy it. So we’re making it more accessible, cheaper. And the connectivity aspect, which I was talking about. That is where we are over investing on partnerships, a Airasia has 75 million customers in the region. So that’s a big opportunity on how can we tap, I was surprised to know to Tune Protect his 4.3 million customers. Before I joined, I was surprised to know, we are between 4.3 to 4.5 million customers. And this is the real data. As I know the name, I know the address. So it’s pretty high for Malaysian numbers, if you ask me, I can tell you there will be
Michael Waitze
25 million people in Malaysia, it’s very high
Rohit Nambiar
30 to 32 million people, I have 4.3 to 4.5 million customers because most people travel in an AirAsia flight. And they have obviously bought a Tune insurance at some point. So I have enough customer data, which has name, address, telephone number, age. So I have basic data on how to use it. And for me, this is the big opportunity of how can I simplify insurance? How can we make it cheaper, less complex. So for example, the new health product we will be launching in a couple of days time, you will notice it can be bought fully online, in less than five minutes, the pricing is probably a fourth of what you would find in the industry. But if you go back to a comprehensive cover, then obviously the pricing will compare itself. It has mental wellness in it. It has, you know a whole lot of aspects that we built in for this group of consumers. So for me, I think that’s the critical part of achieving penetration. And there’s a last group the third one, which I was mentioning, is micro insurance. Micro insurance is different for me real micro insurance for someone who cannot afford his bread, or whose next big investment is to buy a cycle. I think insurance is best provided by the government rather than private insurance. That’s just my personal view on this topic.
Michael Waitze
I want to ask about this mental wellness aspect. It’s something very few people discuss nor mentioned in public, why was it important for you, as an individual, but for the firm for Tune Protect itself to include mental wellness coverage in this easy and simplified new insurance product?
Rohit Nambiar
So I think two reasons, pre COVID and post COVID I think pre COVID we realize that younger people today because of the nuclear families that we have in Asia, Asia is going through what I call westernization, right, so we have more nuclear families 20 years back, most kids even when they’re 25 – 30 lived with their parents, that’s changing fundamentally. So now they don’t have that support system like before, and they need to be given that support system. They’re more health conscious. So what we do is if you want to run your first five kilometer, you want to lose five kilos, we were able to help that help that as well, but also help you on mental wellness aspects of how could you get over stress eating, etc. The second aspect is what the pandemic has taught us is more than anyone women in Asia have been significantly impacted. Why do I say this? And I have said this that I think what COVID has done one good thing which is digital transformation forced digital transformation. The negative side is there is a chance that COVID might unwind all the great work that was done over the last two to three decades for women in this part of the world. Because women today are full time homemakers, full time caregivers, full time, you know professionals, full time digital teachers, the stress on them is very high
Michael Waitze
It’s insane.
Rohit Nambiar
And because of that you will see women drop out of work. So that’s why I want to give them an access to say how can I help you through this phase because a lot of it is mental and physical and you know financial. So how can I help you through the phase to get over the phase. So that’s really where mental wellness aspect is coming. We’ve given it to our employees across all the groups So from UAE, to Thailand, to Malaysia, all our staff have access to be tied up with a health tech. So we have access to mental wellness program, I use it as well. I had this habit of binge eating at 4pm in the evening, you know, basically eating cookies and whatever I felt like, and I felt all the work I put in the gym was pretty useless and I was frustrated, only to realize, you know, my problem was this phobia meeting. So what helped me was to tell me exactly what I can do. And it’s very small suggestions.
Michael Waitze
But superduper important, really super important than the overeating is probably coming from some kind of stress relief, and everybody has it. And very few people talk about it. I just we’re releasing actually today, an episode on the InsurTech podcast about from a conversation that I did with the founder of Ooca a company in Thailand that provides mental wellness and mental health services to people throughout Thailand, because it’s just it’s still stigmatized here. It’s stigmatized everywhere, it’s terrible. Anyway, it’s good to know that you’re doing that. I’m glad you brought up the synergies with Airasia are there are there synergies with Tune hotels as well as that’s still part of the group or not really,
Rohit Nambiar
Of course Tune, all we look at all opportunities, so Tune Talk is another is a telco owned by the Tune group. So along with it’s a JV with another cell with another Telecom, we obviously provide pa to the customers so that telco we work with teleport, which is a logistics, the arm that’s growing a lot for Airasia, we provide coverage for the drivers, and we have some interesting cover there, including loss of income due to COVID for their drivers. So we we look at the whole ecosystem, and see how we can provide it in Thailand, we are quite excited by in the opportunity that we will have in Thailand, because we were one of the first to launch a very unique travel health insurance product, looking at the 100,000 minimum US dollar coverage that was required. In fact, we’re number one in travel insurance based on the latest statistics that came out. And it was just because how fast we reacted since then, of course, people have you know copyrighted better than but as I always say, in insurance product is not a simple product is not a differentiator. It is very easy to copy a product, because actuaries talk to each other is very easy to copy, there’s no rocket science, it comes down to what experience am I giving to my customer?
Michael Waitze
Can we talk a little bit? I agree with that. Actually, by the way. We talked a little bit about how technology facilitates personalization and customer segmentation. And what role data science and analysis play in this. And then after that, I just want to talk a little bit more about how your data analysis infrastructure works. But first, like how does it facilitate this personalization that people are talking about?
Rohit Nambiar
So I think where data really plays a word plays a huge role. For me, I think there are two parts to data. And I’m not going to go technical, because there’s engineering and the science. My biggest problem in this industry is people want to do science before architecting the data the right way. So bad data is equal to bad science is equal to bad decision making is equal to a lot of bad things.
Michael Waitze
So what are you? So can I ask you that? What do you do about your data engineering side of it? Because that’s the basis for all the data science, you’re right. If your data engineering layer is bad, you may as well just shut down your data science because it’s going to be bad.
Rohit Nambiar
I agree. So I think for me, the first step is what I’ve always done is to get the data lake sorted out, what is the data lake looking like? What is my data infrastructure going to be? What sort of data do I need? And how am I going to access this data? Once I get that part sorted out, then comes to question on how do I use this data? And where do I need to use it? The problem with data science and and the whole industry is, and I’ve been again, you asked me about failures, I’ve been a culprit to it because I wasn’t data in my past life. What happens is you spend a few million and then you realize when the board started or the management team suddenly asks you, where are the returns? You’re like, it’s nine months in the returns would come in another nine months. And then when I think back, could I have done it differently? I think yes, I was still sequential in my past life. I wanted to get all the architecting right, then get the science right to overcorrect. The previous problem which was looking at bad data and coming up with bad results. So you kind of over corrected yourself. You went from left to right and many companies have gone through the space. So for me today, it’s a bit of both. While we have to architect to get data get the right data lakes in a very simple thing that I need in my company. For example, is insurance more Have policy view of the customer do not have a single view of the customer. Today, many insurers don’t even know that customer a has four policies with me. Because it’s a policy system. So for me, those are the basics I need to define. And then on the data science aspect, it comes down to what are the fundamental analysis that I need in the company, I would obviously start with less fancy analysis, simple stuff like propensity models, , fraud tags, you know, claim flags analyst is around. Whereas I did a very simple analysis. I’ll give you an example, a real example.
Rohit Nambiar
And many people said, Well, what sort of tools did you use, frankly, very simple stuff. When we analyzed our health claims data, group health claims data, we found that 14% of our claims was shoulder related hospitalization, and we put in underwriting rule as well as another rule before people get hospitalized. What happened was this 14% became 5%. In no time. The reason was, whether we like it or not, there is something called this medical business tourism. What I mean by that is employee medical tourism. employees go and just lie down at the hospital because there’s no skin in the game for them. And again, everybody doesn’t do it, there are some who do it. So this is where when we brought in an intervention backed by data and still supported, whoever needed, proper hospitalization, suddenly, we saw claims improvement, suddenly, we saw better customer experience for those who really deserved it. And those who don’t, we were able to educate those corporates to say, you know what, this many people are just going turning up at a hospital and saying, you know, they want to get hospitalized for what is essentially just a shoulder sprain or, you know, a normal shoulder pain. But of course, that has to be backed by doctors, because I’m not the one to decide that. So I’m just giving an example of how we could use very simple data to more, you know, complex data. And obviously, the higher end is AI where I’m able to really predict I’m able to forecast and I love to give, you know, differential customer service to the to the customers.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I guess that’s where the personalization comes in. Yeah.
Rohit Nambiar
Yes. So I think that is commoditization. And then there’s personalization. If you ask me, I think the industry needs to do a better job of commoditization, which is, how can I bring in a lot of aspects simplify for the customer. And then there is a question of hyper personalization and hyper customization. And that’s where all the service side I’m doing that, because you know, you could either do my customer interaction to a chatbot, you could do a customer interaction to actually speak into someone, either on the phone or by chatting. Or you could do it through the more traditional means of speaking to an agent who comes in submits it, because you still believe in it. But the idea of Omi is how can I still simplify that interaction to the bare minimum that the consumer needs?
Michael Waitze
Got it? Look, I think this is a great way to end this conversation. It’s been really, really fascinating. I’d like to thank you again, Rohit Nambiar, the group Chief Executive Officer, a tune protect group for coming in and doing this today. Really just incredible. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Rohit Nambiar
Thank you.
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