Ms Regine Lai, Managing Director of Insurance Republic, is a Singaporean who has made her entrepreneurial mark across Asia and Europe over the last 10 years; specialising in brand consulting for retail, banking & finance and insurance entities. She recently led the launch of Insurance Republic’s new app, my-insurer.
By Ahmad Zaki
The majority of innovation and InsurTech efforts within the industry have revolved around KYC, user engagement and experience improvements, and automation on the back-end. However, Ms Lai pointed out that very little of the massive InsurTech industry was aimed towards intermediaries.
“Quite a fair amount of innovation in fact aims to remove the middleman, connect the insurer straight to the customer,” she said. “But we understand the value of agents and brokers and we know they’re not going away anytime soon.”
my-insurer.net is a website and mobile platform that serves both intermediaries and customers; a back-end system that serves and supports the consumer-centric front-end application. It aims to improve the operational efficiency of insurance agents, brokers and financial advisers, by helping them consolidate customer databases and remove the need for endless spreadsheets.
The platform also helps connect intermediaries to interested customers. If a customer and an agent connect through the my-insurer app, they will be able to communicate through an in-built chat function, and the agent is able to push news, updates and information to his clients via the news feed function.
In short, the platform has a look and feel that is similar to a social media app, but one that is focused on insurance agents and their customers.
Empowering instead of replacing
Ms Lai emphasised the importance of intermediaries in this industry, maintaining that insurance is about people. “Agents connect with people. Lots of customers tend to trust their agent, not their insurer,” she said. “For us, technology isn’t to replace humans, but to empower them in doing their work.”
“We wanted to create something that adds value to the industry and the customer. So many companies, inside or outside of the industry, are so eager to be seen innovating and involved with InsurTech that they sometimes innovate for the sake of innovating, without actually bringing meaningful change to the industry or its operations,” she added.
Insurance Republic aims at disrupting the industry through the implementation of cutting edge technology. It is a strategic move to complement the current offerings of Stark Group and act as its ideation arm.
It encompasses R&D and captive operational solutions that guide insurers into the digital era with enthusiasm and positivity. It takes pride on being the first independent & collaborative InsurTech Lab, partnering with its historical IT suppliers and the FinTech community.
my-insurer.net is self-funded by Stark Group, which allows Insurance Republic to be more flexible in their growth strategy. A