We sat down with Joan Cuscó, MAPFRE’s Head of Global Transformation, to hear about how his company looks at insurance and the role insurers should take in day-to-day life.

“MAPFRE has been caring about what’s important to people for almost 90 years. We see insurance as the invisible glue that holds our world together, facilitating the continued development of societies. We’re here to fix things when they go wrong and prevent them from breaking in the first place. We are by our clients’ side every step of the way, accompanying them to move forward with peace of mind, contributing to the development of a more sustainable and supportive society.

We do this by covering all risks, whatever the size and wherever they are: Automobile, Homeowners, Health, Life, Commercial, Global Risks and Reinsurance.”

And how do you keep pace with the developments and changing needs of clients?

“We’ve created MAPFRE Open Innovation: a dedicated structure that aims to make customer-centric transformation happen. We leverage partnerships and emerging technologies to create the next generation of products, services and processes around and beyond insurance. What that really means is that we want to use our industry muscle and decades of experience to get into bed with cheeky start-ups so that together, we can take insurance to where it has resisted going for the last century.

Insurance companies have been chasing contemporary customer centricity for over a decade now. And that’s a good thing, and long overdue. Plans across the industry include expanding the knowledge we have of our clients, collecting data to enhance our value proposition and creating a closer relationship with our customers so we can serve them better when they need us. All of this wrapped up in the idea of hyper-personalization. But these efforts can backfire if deployed halfheartedly or incorrectly.”

Can you give some examples of doing it incorrectly?

“Sometimes the relationship is out of sync: a lot of effort but little value. Research suggests that most customers are willing to share data with their insurer in exchange for a personalized offering, better pricing, or a smoother experience. But even in these cases, there are still two big hurdles. The first one is that the benefits of data sharing aren’t all that tangible, and some customers fear that their own data will be used against them at some point. The second one is that (yet more) research shows that customers who are sharing their data become more aware of their lowered risk profile and good behavior and expect their premiums to drop year after year, which is clearly not sustainable for insurers.

Sometimes we transfer too much complexity to the customer. Demanding hyper-personalized products shouldn’t mean that customers must do their own personalization. Allowing customers to select their own coverage and liability/benefit limits works in some markets, but not in others. The same thing happens with sophisticated saving mechanisms or some pay-as-you-go solutions that require manual activation. Not to mention some customer portals for FNOL or claims. As Homer Simpson says, “Can’t someone else do it?” Insurance carriers should emulate Homer in this respect. (Only in this respect…)

Sometimes we miss the whole point: maybe we should just disappear into the bushes. In our noble quest to delight our most adept customers and die-hard fans, we might be missing out on the chance to charm those who don’t care at all about their insurance coverage and the protection it affords them. For sure, insurers need to meet and exceed the demands of our most engaged customers – the ones who do want to get down in the weeds and know exactly what’s what and be totally self-reliant. But our mission is to serve and protect our entire customer base, including those who took out the cheapest insurance just to abide by the law. The ones who don’t open our e-mails. The ones who won’t answer our NPS® surveys. The ones who’ll have a go at fixing their washing machine themselves or just let it fall to pieces before calling us. And we need to serve them, diligently and even beautifully”.

How do you see the insurance industry develop?

“On the one hand, insurance is becoming more and more tangible through high-value services, (which at some point might become new core business lines), like what Luko is doing through its home-based ecosystem, and what MAPFRE is building through its health-services-plus-insurance subsidiary brand, Savia.

At the same time, insurance is positively disappearing into other products and services, becoming transparent, or ultra-embedded, for consumers, just like Omocom and many others are doing, with great success, through adopting a “The best UI is no UI” approach.

In the meantime, we need to radically transform the way we interact with customers, and be more empathetic in terms of the headspace we want to occupy in their minds. The work of companies like Flyreel (property inspections), Tractable (car inspections) or Shift (claims automation) brings us one step closer to this paradise.”

So how would you summarise the future of insurance?

• The future is a place where insurers won’t need to send newsletters, a place in which every single step of our value chain is freed from painful interactions, a place where quotes and claims happen happily in the background….
• The future is a place in which those who want so, can totally forget about insurance and still get peace of mind.

Happy to further discuss the status of the industry, our vision and point of view with everyone coming to DIA Amsterdam 2022”.

Learn more about MAPFRE by visiting their website!