Originally published at: https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/insurance/partnerships-with-insurtechs-google-and-microsoft-to-help-future-generali-india-life-insurance-grow/77647558

In a free-wheeling conversation on BFSI Tech Tales, Byju Joseph, Chief Technology Officer at Generali Central Life Insurance (GCLI) shares the technology and innovation strategy adopted at GCLI, what kind of implementations they’ve been exploring and focusing upon, how do they tie-up with InsurTechs and their cloud adoption journey. Edited Excerpts:

At GCLI, the technology strategy is based on three pillars: innovation, digital & transformation. The insurer prioritises innovation in order to become a lifetime partner of customers (lifetime partner – a concept by the insurers parent arm Generali to support customers with integrated services). On the customer side it has a flexible approach towards need based offering, 24*7 service support & advisory as well. The insurer enables distribution by launching mobility platforms and B2B2C ecosystems. GCLI also focuses on transforming and digitising sales and operations through simplification, automation and emerging tools.

Byju adds there are additional 5 digital layers within their technology strategy:

Fourth, Using data analytics extensively to cross-sell and up-sell (refrains from calling the word AI as he believes it’s still much hyped but assures it’s embedded in their systems). The aim here is to drive meaningful output through analytics and emerging tech in a manner which adds revenue or helps in top-line or bottom-line. Fifth, Building an agile organisation and be more experimentative in nature.

He adds,

Asks before Innovation Implementation

Technology leaders often have to answer key questions like benefits, scalability, etc., before implementing any innovation or technology developments

Byju says,

He highlights that any innovation in experiment stage is subject to failure, as soon as the above key asks are answered we get on a experiment mode or POC (proof-of-concept) and test, evaluate and analyse that experiment, followed by cost-benefit analysis documentation, approvals and full scale implementations happens after that

Tie-up with InsurTechs

Byju strongly feels that it is clear that not everything can be done internally. At GCLI the internal focus has been on innovating from simple to advanced processes across value chains. Externally, they collaborate from start-ups to leading tech counterparts.

Byju says partnering with start-ups is interesting as there’s room to co-innovate and grow together.

It’s partnership with one such InsurTech Arya.ai which automates and underwrites the entire human based decisioning system to a complete machine decisioned output. “Humans are not displaced but help humans to make better informed and smarter decisions.

We partnered with Arya.ai to automate and underwrite an entire human based decisioning system which is completely machine decisional. Not replacing humans but helps to make humans better informed and smarter decisions. We didn’t have internal capacity, wherewithal to make this happen so we partnered them.”

On their tie-ups with leading tech giants, Generali Global tied-up with Google to adopt key platforms like cloud and analytics and it will help in getting cross-continental learnings. Second, they have also tied-up with Microsoft,

They (large tech cos) don’t co-innovate (unlike start-ups) with us but help us to put platforms in place.

Cloud Adoption

For Byju at GCLI, cloud adoption is a gradual process. He confidently says anything distribution facing and customer facing has to be cloud native without any questions. While we can move the virtual infrastructure to the cloud but we’ve taken a conscious call to make it a private cloud within the data center. By 2021 end, around 65% of my infrastructure will be on cloud.