We sat down with Sean Ringsted, Chubb’s Chief Digital Business Officer, to hear an incumbent’s perspective on innovation and where Chubb is placing its bets when it comes to its own digital strategy. 

How would you describe Chubb’s approach to innovation, as an incumbent insurer?

Innovation in the insurance industry has always been about the development of new products and services. What’s different today is that the pace of change is being driven by data, analytics and customer expectations.

Due to our scale, global reach and balance sheet strength, we can be bold and experiment with new technologies as we execute our digital strategy.

Insurance incumbents like Chubb bring significant capabilities to the table: underwriting experience, risk appetite and claims handling, to name but a few. Our digital strategy is thoughtful and aligned with our business objectives and growth opportunities. Digital is not something bolted on or operating separately from our core business; it’s integrated into everything we do.

In a few of our businesses, competing without scalable capabilities is impossible. Growing consumer and small commercial business overseas must be done digitally.

Where is Chubb placing the “big bets” in its digital evolution?

From my perspective, how the product is delivered and serviced, and with whom insurers collaborate to meet the evolving anywhere/anytime needs of consumers and businesses, is what will reshape the industry. Partnerships are a real feature of the digital economy. To succeed in today’s world, insurers must integrate with affinity partners that have strong customer relationships to provide insurance products and services that are complimentary to the partners’ core offers.

We’ve built Chubb Studio, a scalable integration platform with an API library that allows us to quickly and easily be embedded into our partners’ digital ecosystems with flexible insurance products, services and experiences for consumers and small businesses. We take a “bumble bee” approach to doing so. We go from region to region, taking solutions that worked for one partner in one region and repurpose, or “cross-pollinate,” them for another partner in a different region – an approach that has helped us materially scale our global partnership network, but with localized adaptations and execution.

The capabilities we develop for a partner in Asia, we find can be used for a partner in Latin America – and vice versa.  As new features are developed, we are able to find opportunities to share them across the globe. We like to think of it as innovation that is “fit for purpose” but always with scalability. Our API library is extensive and available to all – it’s open-source and continues to expand with every partnership integration.  

Is “embedded” insurance the future of distribution?

Embedded insurance is a substantial opportunity for simple, modular and affordable products and services that are suitable for today’s digital platforms and ecosystems but will not replace more complex insurance products or the important role of the broker and agent. At Chubb, we’re not just assessing the opportunity, we’re actively executing on this market trend, and doing so in a meaningful way across geographies, verticals and products. 

Embedded insurance is about selling relevant, contextual products at scale in the purchase path of the customer journey. Think about when a customer purchases a ticket from an airline, or wants to protect a future bill payment in case of an accident, or when they hail a ride on an app.

Grab passengers in Southeast Asia receive Chubb ride delay cover and personal accident insurance offers proactively in their purchase path when they request a ride in the Grab app. Nubank customers in Brazil and DBS customers in Singapore receive offers for Chubb life or travel insurance while using the mobile app or online portal from their digital bank. Betterfly wellness app users in Chile can earn life insurance from Chubb, while they build healthy habits and stay active day-to-day.

Our approach to partnership integrations has significant and exciting momentum. Our digital partner count now exceeds 185 leading brands and includes an expanded list of verticals such as fintechs, e-commerce, telcos super apps, and many others. We have more than 19 million small value policies in force across 20 different countries and an addressable market of over 300 million customers.

Chubb Studio powers our partnerships and offers a competitive advantage in the B2B2C environment. The platform is helping to expand products and services into emerging ecosystems and create an opportunity for insurance to exist in consumer’s day-to-day lives in a new, modular way.

Can you tell us more about Chubb’s embedded insurance offerings?

Chubb Studio is the engine behind our embedded insurance integrations.

It allows our partner companies to embed Chubb’s extensive range of consumer insurance products quickly and easily, including personal accident, supplemental health and life, residential and contents, mobile phone and travel as well as small business insurance, customer services and claims capabilities via a white-labeled, co-branded or Chubb-branded interface.

Chubb Studio’s direct interfaces connect through an API or widget and allow Chubb partners to make their own adjustments using real-time tracking of product performance. Our vision for the future is to integrate additional value-added services into digital ecosystems, an emerging portfolio of risk advisory, scoring, and “predict/prevent” solutions that we are curating for partners and their customers.

View their website here: https://about.chubb.com/

Watch Sean’s keynote at DIA Amsterdam 2022 here.