You will only know the quality of your insurance policy when you need it most. Masahiro Ota, head of claims at Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance, shares how his company is working to protect its customers even better and help rebuild their lives after disasters.
“You only see the true worth of an insurance policy for the first time when you are caught up in an emergency and your insurance company provides support,” says Masahiro Ota, a managing executive officer and the head of claims at Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance (TMNF). He learned this early in his career, spending his formative years as a claims handler, and since then has found himself motivated by customers’ feedback and gratitude. Today he oversees around 10,000 employees, and it is his responsibility to ensure they consistently deliver on the company’s purpose “to be there for our customers and our communities in their time of need”.
Masahiro Ota, Managing Executive Officer and Head of Claims, Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance
Resilience and responsiveness throughout the claims process
To ensure they deliver on this purpose, TMNF’s claims employees are increasingly being supported and enabled by the rapid digitisation of the claims service and the processing systems that support it. Aligned with the evolving needs of customers, online channels are starting to take over from the telephone as the main way the company interacts with them, while technology such as artificial intelligence (AI)-based automation and voice recognition is streamlining and speeding up claims processes.
For minor accidents, AI now identifies the information and documents needed for a claim and automatically lets customers know what they have yet to submit. “This lets customers carry out procedures at their own convenience and significantly speeds up the payout process,” says Mr Ota. The approach is especially effective in situations such as major natural disasters where many claims need to be dealt with at the same time.
Improving the speed of claims settlement is important because “we believe insurance is essential social infrastructure for individuals and companies to rebuild and recover,” Mr Ota explains. The experience of multiple natural disasters in Japan has helped TMNF create new products and capabilities to support customers: for example, it has developed a parametric earthquake insurance product called “e-quick” that provides coverage for temporary expenses within as little as three days.
To further expand its capabilities, TMNF collaborates with external partners. It is working with Belfor, a specialist disaster-recovery company from Germany, to offer holders of property insurance the use of proprietary decontamination technology to restore damaged property and speed recovery. And together with Finnish satellite manufacturer ICEYE, TMNF can use satellite imagery to quickly determine the level of damage across a broad area, which again accelerates the claims process.
Technology also helps keep the business sustainable. “Proper payment of insurance claims is required by society to maintain trust in the operations of a sound and stable non-life insurance system and the reputation of the industry as a whole,” says Mr Ota. To do that, it must rigorously exclude fraudulent claims. TMNF has started working with startups in countries including the United States, France and Japan to develop AI-based scoring systems that can analyse accident information and detect cases that need additional scrutiny.
Empowering people to focus on value-added tasks
Human expertise will work alongside tech in insurance claims in the coming years, and TMNF’s efforts to integrate people and digital technology in its business processes won it a Good Design Award in 2021.
“The best mix of human expertise and digital solutions is the critical foundation of our digital strategy,” says Mr Ota. And the company still views people as “the foundation of our competitive edge”. Digitisation augments employees’ ability to understand customers’ situations and protect communities in times of need, creating “an environment that enables our team members to devote as much time and energy as possible to those areas that make a real difference”.
Improved digital tools let TMNF’s employees do more to help customers in times of crisis. “Technological evolution and expansion now enable far more accurate and rapid contingency responses,” Mr Ota says. Over the past ten years, digitisation—along with lessons from disasters including the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and the Kumamoto earthquakes in 2016—has led TMNF to need only half as many people to handle claims in the event of a large-scale disaster, while providing the same level of service and delivering speedy payment. Satellites and drones do some of the foundational work, and technology has enabled the claims service to provide support to customers from staff based remotely.
TMNF now also supports networks of volunteer disaster-response groups by sharing its satellite data on flood damage, and helps local authorities and NGOs plan for contingencies. A key social initiative for TMNF has been to establish CORE, a consortium for disaster prevention and mitigation. With around 100 Japanese companies from a range of industries participating, CORE is uniting insight and expertise to strengthen resilience while creating new business opportunities.
The transition from payer to partner
In the future, Mr Ota expects TMNF to “think out of the box” and not be constrained by how things have been done in the past. “Technology will continue to evolve rapidly, and social issues will become more diverse and complex.” But new technologies and improved problem-solving capabilities will keep strengthening the company’s competitive edge.
Meanwhile, TMNF is noticing that customers’ needs aren’t limited to the payment of claims: they want services that pre-emptively prevent losses and hasten recovery. For example, in the area of cyber-security more and more policyholders are asking both for advice and for introductions to specialists in preventing and mitigating attacks.
“More customers are interested in support and services that offer protection, not just payouts in the event of an emergency,” Mr Ota says. “We are making the transition, from the traditional role of an insurance company as a ‘payer’ to being a ‘partner’ that is there at all times to support our customers and communities we work in.”
This article is part of the Resilient Cities Index 2023, developed by the Economist Impact an sponsored by Tokio Marine Group.
Explore the Index through the link below:
https://impact.economist.com/projects/resilient-cities/en/article/delivering-the-true-value-of-insurance/
