The Asia Insurance Industry Awards involve months and month of work and preparation and planning. People have come to rely on them as the only trusted yardstick of who was on the way up and who was the best-of-the-best. Coming to a shortlist and picking the winners from an original list of several hundred entries was no mean feat.
By Paul McNamara
Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s Asia Insurance Industry Awards – not only for coming out ahead – but for doing so in the middle of the biggest health crisis in a century.
The responsibility that each of the winners now has is to go out and shout about their winning an award – to reinforce the message about the important place that insurance and risk management have in our lives.
The editorial team at Asia Insurance Review will be watching closely throughout the year to see how the winners build upon their successes – and we will continue to spread the message to do our bit in reducing the various protection gaps that we still have in the Asia-Pacific region.
We thought we would start the process by asking this year’s winners a simple question: What change will winning the award make to your business – and how will it improve resilience in your community?
We hope you enjoy reading their responses.
Life Insurance Company of the Year and Innovation of the Year
HSBC Life (International) Limited
“HSBC Life is honoured to be named Life Insurance Company of the Year and also recognised with the Innovation of the Year for 2020. In this time of unprecedented challenges for our industry, these two awards represent milestone achievements for us and reinforce our unyielding focus on customer needs, innovation and industry leadership.
“Looking forward, we are committed to helping build resilience in our community by serving more customers via digital platforms, strategically innovating within our insurance solutions whilst also raising public awareness on important social challenges.
“By doing so, HSBC Life will continue to uphold our brand message ‘Because a promise is a promise’ and help our customers keep the promises they make to their loved ones. It is a promise delivered by our colleagues at HSBC Life, whose collaborative and ambitious efforts are affirmed by this highly prestigious recognition.”
HSBC Life (International) Limited CEO Edward Moncreiffe.
General Insurance Company of the Year
Go Digit General Insurance Limited
“Winning this award will be a huge motivation for our employees and partners who are working rigorously even in this global crisis and will help fortify our customers’ trust in us. This, in turn, will help us launch more relevant products for our customers, will empower our partners to earn trust of more customer segments and will drive our employees to simplify complexities every day.
“We hope to inspire the whole industry to believe in the power of simplicity and transparency, thus collectively changing the face of insurance.”
Digit Insurance CEO Vijay Kumar.
Digital Insurer of the Year
Cathay Life Insurance Co, Ltd
“Winning this award provides great encouragement to everyone in the company who has been involved in our digital transformation, reinforces the fact that we are moving in the right direction and further motivates everyone to keep moving forward at full speed.
“In the spirit of this award, we will keep re-thinking how we do business and build products and services that meet the needs of digital native customers.
“And finally, this award will help change people’s perception of traditional insurance companies as being slow and rigid and send a message that large, incumbent insurance companies can also be agile, innovative and truly digital.”
Cathay Life Insurance Co, Ltd CEO Andrew Liu.
Educational Service Provider of the Year
The Association of Indonesian Qualified Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers (APARI)
“For APARI, winning this award is not only something to be grateful for as a form of recognition from the insurance industry for the results of our hard work, but deeper than that, it becomes a driving factor for us to make everything we do better and more beneficial to our members, industry as well as stakeholders.
“This award will be an encouragement for us to continue to be creative and innovative in an effort to help empower the insurance community and society.”
The Association of Indonesian Qualified Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers chairman Bambang Suseno.
Broker of the Year
“I feel proud of our accomplishment, which was made possible by our client-first approach and focused efforts to elevate customer experience. It also bears testament to our willingness to invest in talent development and retain talent and will help us attract new talent to our extensive career possibilities.
“The award further elevates and amplify our corporate image and social responsibility and opens more doors for us to expand partnerships with community organisations and other companies. Our colleagues feel even more inspired to contribute to social impact.”
Marsh business development leader for Singapore Eileena Siah and
Marsh energy and power leader for Hong Kong Flora Fong.
Service Provider of the Year (Joint Winner)
“The ‘Service Provider of the Year Award 2020’ represents a huge honour for Medix Global. In terms of change, this represents a welcome boost to the morale of our dedicated and hardworking teams around the world, particularly during this intensely challenging year.
“The Asia Insurance Industry Awards is also testament from the judges to the innovative and transformative services we provide, and comes at an opportune time for Medix as we continue our expansion across the region and have rolled out additional services to China, India and across Southeast Asia. Recognition of this calibre, and from Asia’s insurance industry, will further raise our visibility and attract more interest from the life and health insurance industry, which will allow us to continue and make a difference and flatten the inequality of care curve in the region.
“The award demonstrates to the region how important it is for us all to continue to strive for excellence. Medix Global launched Mask of Solidarity initiative back in March, when COVID-19 was first hitting Asia. We will continue to leverage our network and partners to drive initiatives like this, and these awards help to bolster this common bond further to serve the community better.
Medix Global CEO Sigal Atzmon.
Service Provider of the Year (Joint Winner)
“This award is testimony to the diligent work that continues to be done by our insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond teams to help clients and local governments build more financially-resilient communities around the world. In the expanding and evolving ILS space, AIR maintains its dominant position by providing a complete solution - one that combines the highest quality information and analysis with the industry standard software for analysing the widest range of financial instruments.
“We are motivated by serving our customers and we are focused on the risks that are ongoing and emerging. AIR has committed significant resources to deliver the most scientifically credible and advanced models for this region. This award signals that our hard work and dedication to produce best-in-class models for this region is truly helping insurance, reinsurance and capital markets to better own their risk.”
AIR Worldwide, Singapore managing director Ashish Jain.
Reinsurer of the Year
National Reinsurance Corporation of the Philippines (Nat Re)
“This prestigious recognition inspires us to set the bar higher to strive and champion our clients’ goals, provide them the best customer service and seek out new partnerships that will promote a healthy insurance industry. It bolsters our existing partnerships and opens more doors for new ones, domestic and foreign.
“The award also helps cement our place as an advocate of the interests of not just the insurance industry but also of the national economy and society. With this mark of excellence and endorsement from peers, we hope more government and private sector organisations will consider us as a collaborator in public-private partnerships, especially those which involve our main advocacies of disaster resilience and financial inclusion.”
National Reinsurance Corporation of the Philippines CEO Allan Santos.
Sustainability Award
“This award will strengthen Generali Indonesia’s position in being committed to carrying out our vision ‘to enable people to shape a safer future by caring for their lives and dreams’. In addition, it will also support us as Generali Group in creating sustainability goals for many communities and involve many parties to help others.
“To improve resilience in our community, we will continue assist them by provide basic needs, health care and education. For the community, we already have a lot of plans in the coming years where we aim to expand targeting health and social needs. In this pandemic, all volunteering activities will be held virtually with virtual storytelling for children, online learning for parents and we will also regularly send them some essentials. This award will grow new spirit and energy to our employees and agents to give more to this programme.”
Generali Indonesia chief marketing officer Vivin Arbianti Gautama