Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company, AXA Group, Allianz and Médis also recognized for industry innovation in automation, ecosystems, new services, customer experience.
Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A. (“Generali”) and Generali Italy has received the marquee 2017 Global Innovator of the Year award at the second annual Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance awards held in London.
Generali was recognized by the judges for its strong focus on innovation in all submissions, including its work on crowd sourcing, incubation initiatives, collaboration with startups and partnerships with global organizations.
Moshe Tamir, Global head of Digital Transformation said, “We’re delighted that our commitment to innovation around the world has been recognized. The insurance landscape is changing fast and digital transformation is at the center of this change. At Generali, we see new technology as instrumental in creating an even stronger relationship with our clients and distributors, and further shaping our business for the future.”
Second place in the Global Innovator of the Year category went to Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company (Japan), while AXA Group (Italy) completed the top three.
Piercarlo Gera, senior managing director, Financial Services, Accenture Distribution & Marketing, said, “This year’s entries truly set a new benchmark for innovation in insurance. It was clear from the diverse range of submissions that insurers around the world are acting with urgency to innovate for their customers and capitalise on emerging new technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence and the internet-of-things.”
The global Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance awards celebrate and promote innovation across the insurance industry. This year, 144 institutions from 38 countries submitted a total of 219 entries for consideration. In addition to Generali landing the headline award, four other category winners were announced at the awards show in London:
• Connected Insurance & Ecosystems Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company (Japan) won in this category for its ‘Sharing Medical Information on Blockchain’ offering. By sharing patients’ medical information between relevant parties using a blockchain platform, the number of unnecessary medical examinations fell, administrative costs declined and the quality of service improved. Europ Assistance Group in Italy and Belgium-based Qover were runners-up.
• Customer Experience & Engagement ‘AXA Sure’ from AXA Group (France) prevailed in this category with an app that allows information on household contents to be digitized and stored. Users benefit from policy transparency and faster processing in the event of a claim. Second place went to ‘MyAngel’ from Italy-based Groupama Assicurazioni, and third place went to ‘Consultation through Telemedicine’ from Bradesco Seguros in Brazil.
• Intelligent Automation The winner in the Intelligent Automation category was ‘Allianz AI Sales Smart Mentoring’ from Allianz (France) – a smart mentoring solution that provides real-time analysis and diagnosis for salesforces to harness the full potential of their commercial relationship skills. ‘Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Claim Document Recognition System’ from Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company (Japan) came in second place, with ‘Insurance Advisor’ from Liberty Mutual Insurance in the USA being placed third.
• Best Disruptive Product or Service This category went to Médis (Portugal) for its Enhancing Omni Channel by adding interactive TV commerce initiative, which was chosen at the evening awards ceremony. Shortlisted finalists included Allianz (France), InsureApp (Netherlands), KBC Insurance (Belgium), and Slice (USA).
Vincent Bastid, CEO of Efma, said, “Not only are these awards are the perfect way to showcase the industry’s spirit of innovation, they provide an opportunity for insurers to come together and learn about new best practices. On behalf of the awards committee, I’d like to congratulate all our entrants and the ultimate winners on their breakthrough innovations over the last year.”
To learn more about the award-winning innovations, please visit: www.efma.com/innovationininsurance/winners-2017
