Great Eastern bets on AI, specialised products in strategy revamp

It plans to expand its products for high-net-worth people and SME owners.

Great Eastern Life Assurance Co. Ltd. is stepping up digital investments and refining its product lineup as it repositions for growth in Southeast Asia’s competitive insurance market, Group Chief Executive Officer Greg Hingston said.

“We are revitalising our strategy to strengthen how we partner with our customers in their financial well-being,” he told Insurance Asia. “This means tailoring our propositions to different customer personas to ensure that they are more reflective of their evolving needs."

The Singapore-based insurer, which refreshed its logo on its 117th anniversary in August, plans to expand its products for high-net-worth individuals and small- and medium-sized business owners.

Singapore’s biggest and longest-running insurer is also rolling out artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support its advisory network.

Hingston said an in-house AI solution has reduced client-meeting preparation time from more than two hours to under 30 minutes. “Applied across our agency force in Singapore, that saves half-a-million hours,” he said in an emailed reply to questions.

Whilst insurers in Asia have ramped up digital and embedded products, the CEO said Great Eastern would continue using multiple channels—digital, agency, bancassurance, and affinity partners—to meet customers “where they are.”

Here’s the rest of the interview:
 

Beyond your new logo, what real changes can customers expect from Great Eastern?
We took the opportunity to refresh our logo when we celebrated Great Eastern’s 117th birthday and commemorated more than a century of serving generations of customers in Singapore and Malaysia.

We are revitalising our strategy to strengthen how we partner with our customers in their financial well-being, at every stage of life. 

We are focused on tailoring our propositions for various customer personas to ensure that they are more reflective of their evolving needs. We are also developing more specialised products and services for certain client groups, for example, to serve the specific needs of high-net-worth and small and medium-sized business owners.

We are also investing in digital solutions and AI tools to bring best-in-class capabilities to drive personalised engagement with our customers and ensure they receive the best advice and service for their protection, healthcare, wealth accumulation and legacy planning needs when they access us digitally or through our advisors.

How will digital and embedded insurance affect your traditional agency model, and what balance are you aiming for?
Ultimately, it is simple—we have to be where our customers are. And we make this possible through different channels such as direct digital engagement channels, our agency and financial advisors, our bancassurance and affinity partners and brokers. 

Insurance can be a relatively complex product, especially for life, health, and wealth plans. Buying insurance is a considered decision. 

Our financial representatives walk alongside our customers through every life stage, and I have heard many instances of our customers drawing strength and confidence from their financial representatives, especially during difficult times. 

Having said that, we will need both human touch and technology. 

The latest technology is fast-tracking improvements in the way large amounts of information can be distilled for customers and improving the productivity of our advisors. 

For example, we have been piloting an AI solution developed in-house to support our financial advisors in their personal interactions with customers and reducing the time needed for customer meeting preparation from over two hours to less than 30 minutes. When applied across the entire agency force in Singapore, this is expected to save half-a-million hours—allowing our reps to convert that into more quality time supporting our customers’ financial planning needs.  

Where are the biggest growth opportunities in ASEAN, and how will Great Eastern shift resources to capture them?
At present, we are focused on two areas—firstly, genuine white spaces where we can bring something new to the market, and secondly, the opportunity to deepen our penetration with better propositions.

When you consider the megatrends playing out across the Asian region in the form of unprecedented wealth creation and intergenerational wealth transfer led by affluent and high-net-worth clients, ageing societies and longevity risk (adequacy of retirement income and access to affordable long-term healthcare), and technology or AI reshaping the entire value chain from advisory distribution models, medical diagnosis and treatments, underwriting and pricing risk, servicing and claims management—this all means Asia needs more financial planning and insurance, but the means of insurance provision and consumption is changing. 

With this backdrop, we will continue to double down on our market-leading businesses in Singapore and Malaysia (both conventional and family takaful), and further scale our business in Indonesia.

Across our different business lines and through our OCBC Group connectivity, there is significant value for us to further unlock. Looking beyond our current markets, we evaluate opportunities on an ongoing basis, and we also consider the wider OCBC Group market presence in terms of where we could leverage that to expand the reach of our solutions.