In 2016, Muang Thai Life Assurance Public Company Limited (MTL) was the secondlargest life insurer by total premiums. It has also been the market leader in both new business premium and bancassurance for four consecutive years, with a 19% CAGR.

The insurer’s core values of “Customer Centric, Creativity, Commitment to success, Collaboration and Caring” have played a crucial role in establishing solid foundation and representing MTL’s corporate culture and business practice.

MTL pioneered customer loyalty programmes in Thailand’s insurance industry. The “Muang Thai Smile Club” continues to provide enjoyable activities and privileges to customers, counting more than 1 million members today. It has implemented business intelligence, while a new customer analysis tool “HearSay” promoted social engagement between agents and customers, and allowed the insurer to monitor customer lifestyles via social media. Leveraging technology paved the way for MTL to then adapt and develop products in response to customers’ lifestyles.

Creativity has also spurred MTL to develop unique products and services to differentiate itself from others. It launched various innovative health insurance products, such as a critical illness policy for diabetes care, exemplifying its leadership in taking specific customer needs into consideration. Its “Fuchsia” Innovation Centre is an out-of-the-box concept to integrate ideas.

As a recognition of success, MTL has won many awards in its home territory, most notably the “Life Insurance Company with Outstanding Management Award”, which was bestowed on the insurer for 10 consecutive years by the Office of Insurance Commission Thailand. MTL takes risk management seriously, and has been certified with the ISO 22301:2012 (Business Continuity Management System) standard.

At MTL, collaboration is a key driver internally and externally. A “Muang Thai Link” platform enables employees to communicate and share their ideas, while on the external front, MTL has built a strong multi-distribution channel as its strategic advantage. It has joined forces with its partners to develop a training roadmap, leading to great cross-functional teamwork.

As a caring insurer and employee, MTL has provided various touch points, such as a 24/7 call centre and a MTL Global Connect service so customers have access to coverage even when abroad. It partnered with the Islamic Bank of Thailand to offer several Takaful products in order to serve Islamic customers’ needs. The insurer has also launched several awareness initiatives to educate the public, such as a “Safe Drive No Accident” campaign. Its firm’s adherence to corporate governance, especially the disclosure and transparency policy has been recognised via a slew of ethics and CSR awards.

MTL truly believes in being a “Customer Centric” organisation, embracing all of its corporate core values to provide excellent products and services.

Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company is a joint venture between integrated healthcare provider, Apollo Hospitals Group, and the Munich Re Group. In the short span of a decade since its 2007 launch, it has achieved a number of firsts in India for its products: lifelong renewal, no sub-limits, no claim-based loading and co-payment, portability, restore and multiplier benefits and the first standalone dengue product. These have influenced regulation and also inspired other insurers.

The insurer was a pioneer in offering customised and integrated healthcare financing with healthcare management for corporate clients. Its wellness programmes, tailored to participants by health coaches, hand-hold clients through their journey to improve their health conditions, monitoring risk factor levels for those with chronic diseases and coaching them into a healthier lifestyle. The personalised health coaching helps the insurer to establish a special bond with each participant.

Apollo Munich has deep-rooted local knowledge, which helps the insurer delve deep into social realities and the market needs of healthcare in India. It conducts regular market research to keep a table on shifting sentiments, thus allowing for the development of products to cater to the changing needs of society. It helps its intermediaries keep updated on the latest technologies and market trends.

Innovation has helped the insurer to revolutionise its processes. Its digital distribution model, AMPower, has reduced policy issuance service from above 15 days to seven minutes, and over 60% of its advisers have used the tool to conclude sales, reflecting the insurer’s emphasis on shifting to digital selling by using technology and tablet-based distribution.

Its claims settlement is at 90%, higher than the industry benchmark. It has created a dedicated customer portal to offer seamless services to customers, launched a “Health Jinn” health app to help them fulfil their health goals and walk to good health. It uses social media to create awareness about health insurance and reach out to youth. Its campaigns such as #HealthyMarching, have been highly successful in generating a movement for healthier living.

During FY 2016-17, Apollo Munich achieved a GWP of INR1300 crores (US$199.6 million), reflecting a growth of around 17% year-on-year. It is the fastest insurance company in India to reach a break-even point and made profits in the last three years. In the last FY, its profit increased by 1,674%. The company has achieved an impressive growth rate over last seven years, a CAGR of 41%, reflecting the success of its business formula in the mere decade that the insurer has been in operation.

ANZIIF offers a wide range of educational services for the industry from traditional modes of education to interactive training modules to promote greater competency across the various segments of the business, as well as promote understanding of the Insurance Broking Code of Practice and Life Insurance Code of Practice. It has also held professional development events across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China. These included conferences, a course, workshops and award ceremonies.

ANZIIF substantially increased its online professional development library with over 300 new articles, videos, whitepapers and multimedia activities, on top of its existing Journal, a widely-read insurance publication that delivers technical content to a readership of about 50,000. The learning ANZIIF offers embraces technology to produce an enhanced learning experience. Its digital learning makes use of multimedia, audio-visual, case studies and Q&A learning. Real-world online scenarios allow students to demonstrate critical thinking, while Gamification of assessment structures help professionals to invest in the learning experience

Responding to the market’s need to address changes brought about by digital disruption, the ANZIIF Insurtech Conference, the first InsurTech industry conference held in Australia, took place in February 2017, attended by almost 300 and oversubscribed. ANZIIF also exercised InsurTech thought leadership, with 12 presentations at industry conferences and commentaries in 26 industry publications during the period under review.

In view of upcoming developments, ANZIIF developed training for life insurance and broking specifically targeted at the new Codes of Practice to be introduced in those two areas. It organised roundtables addressed at life insurance, careers in insurance and carried out broker research. 2016 saw ANZIIF launch a series of new professional and educational standards. A new Professional Standards framework defines the knowledge, skills and attributes required for particular job roles and provides a framework for education and training programs provided by the institute and defines the educational standards for insurance professionals in Australia.

Come 1 July 2017, all claims and underwriting professionals in life insurance in Australia must have completed mandatory training.

• Broking Code of Practice training was developed and provided free for all members to ensure the understanding of and compliance with NIBA’s Broking Code of Practice.
• Careers in Insurance roundtables were held in Melbourne and Sydney to discuss the dissemination of the Careers in Insurance education program in high schools and universities to increase the awareness of insurance as a career and ensure quality candidates into the industry.
• Broker research was conducted across ANZIIF and NIBA membership bodies to understand the attitude brokers have towards further education and professional development with the aim of producing effective content for the sector.

In end 2016, MetLife Asia’s innovation centre LumenLab introduced conVRse, a global virtual reality (VR) customer service platform designed to revolutionise interaction between insurers and customers. It is said to be a pioneering, VR ondemand experiential customer servicing platform around the world

LumenLab piloted conVRse in India to address customer expectations for fast and convenient access to quality insurance services. Despite strong market growth, India’s insurance market remains inefficient with a reliance on paper documentation and outdated systems. Customers typically have unsatisfactory experiences at physical branches due to insufficient infrastructure to handle a large number of customers across a wide geographical area.

Harnessing the Indian population’s rapid adoption of smartphones and growing VR ecosystem, MetLife developed conVRse to reinvent face-to-face customer engagements and create a stronger emotional connection with customers while addressing servicing challenges. The initiative differentiates the insurer from its competitors in one of the most crowded and competitive markets in Asia, where there has been increasing price competition and commoditisation of insurance products.

The development of conVRse was based on in-depth research, including polling, customer interviews and focus groups on customer needs. The initiative creates an immersive and personalised experience, where customers can access MetLife’s insurance expert “Khushi”, a virtual avatar with a human voice powered by any one of MetLife’s insurance experts, by using a simple VR headset such as Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR with a mid-range smartphone.

The experts are able to personalise the content shown to customers, including policy details, images, and videos. conVRse allows customers to view and update their policy details, have service requests executed in real-time, enquire about the status of their claims, complete the Know Your Customer process through an immersive and interactive experience.

Since its launch, conVRse has been rolled out in 15 branches across 10 cities, with over 90% of customers using VR saying they were happy with it and would prefer it over a face to face interaction. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), which officiated its launch, sees the potential of the platform to transform customer experience.

Given the positive response to the initial conVRse rollout, MetLife is optimistic about the wider commercialisation of conVRse to enhance cost optimisation and service value in other markets, and plans to extend the solution across the region with more services offered, moving from onboarding to settlement. In the long term, it plans to launch conVRse to reduce or remove the need for customers to visit physical MetLife branches, so that it will attain true self-servicing by a conversational artificial intelligence(AI) based assistant.

Established in 2006 with offices in Hong Kong, London, and Tel Aviv, the Medix Group is a global healthcare services company with a customer base of over 1.8 million people in over 90 countries. In addition to nurses and operational teams, it employs over 300 in-house doctors and maintains unique and longstanding professional relations with medical specialists and facilities globally. It is placed at a unique intersection in the global healthcare landscape, between payers, providers and patients.

Over the years, Medix Global has developed unique service models, which advance accessibility and implementation of quality healthcare globally while ensuring that medical cost inflation is responsibly controlled. It has helped to address challenges, such as disparities in accessibility to quality medical care across geographies, and no doctor being able to take a holistic view of diagnosis due to ever-more specialised and fragmented healthcare. Bridging these gaps requires a delicate balancing of the competing interests of providers, payers and patients.

Medix has developed a range of services, divided into Healthcare Management Solutions and Medical Governance (MediGov); both focus on the accessibility and implementation of quality medical care. For the former, Personal Medical Case Management service addresses both the patients’ need for certainty of personalised clinical solutions and insurers’ need for cost efficiency, via a global one-stop shop for access to quality care.

The use of innovative digital tools enables secure global sharing of the expertise by leading specialists, which is then implemented locally. These tools include a proprietary web based electronic medical records, a secure web-based radiology file uploading and sharing system and unique medical data analytics tools.

Medix’s model embodies a change in approach towards provisioning of private insurance services, transitioning it from health payer to a health player by positively impacting the quality of care administered to members. These services are offered in Asia by through Medix’s partners, AIA and AXA.

For MediGov, Medix’s services provide insurers and corporates with the expertise and knowledge required to implement responsible, medically informed clinical policy decisions. This includes structuring of policies, clinical guidelines, provider relations, regulatory consultancy and clinical support of the claims adjudication process.

Medix’s services have been statistically proven to improve case management in medical outcomes and cost optimisation for its clients. The joint effort between the company and its partners control medical inflation, which in turn helps to maintain sustainable premium growth, hence keeping private medical insurance affordable in the long term.

Since October 2013, Mr Teo has led the Risk Management office (RMO) at the Eastern Health Alliance (EHA) where he reports to the Chief Risk Officer (CRO). EHA is a public regional healthcare system in Singapore, providing an integrated range of healthcare services. It also manages an acute-care hospital, where staff handle all situations including clinical risks in addition to the usual organisational risks.

Mr Teo and his team have worked tirelessly to target recurring problems from key serious reportable events. Proven root cause analysis techniques were used to identify problems and provide solutions. RMO also focused on targeting non-clinical risks such as service delivery cases leading to negative media events, which were consequently reduced.

The team also provided research and facilitated discussion with experts regarding surgery, patient falls, and reputation/crisis management from social media to help the ground manage negative impact with interconnected risks. Both the senior management and Board Risk Committee (RC) became increasingly receptive to such an integrated approach and has approved the ERM framework by establishing the organisation’s statement of risk appetite that provides explicit risk limits and tolerance levels for critical risk – a significant milestone in providing concrete action at an organisational level regarding risk management.

This framework has also enabled the hospital to mitigate key clinical and corporate risks by providing sufficient and accurate information to facilitate swift responses. Timely and accurate escalation of medico-legal, infection outbreaks and potential negative media cases to the RC helped in activating the relevant authorities to implement preventive measures.

Mr Teo’s passion for Risk Management has extended beyond promoting ERM in his workplace to both the local community and abroad. He values collaboration with various risk-related associations, which has allowed him to successfully rally support in building the risk community. As the lead of the Risk Management Society’s (RIMS) regional advisory group in Southeast Asia, he has been vital in establishing partnership between RIMS (Risk Management Society) and Singapore’s NTU (Nanyang Technological University) in 2017. As one of the founding members of PARIMA (the Pan-Asia Risk & Insurance Management Association), he also played a vital role in its establishment.

Having represented Singapore (as a member of the national working group for risk in ISO 31000) in contributing to the development of International Risk Standards with a revision for ISO 31000:2017, he is well-versed in best practices for Risk Management, including the COSO ERM 2016.

Willis Towers Watson has offered a suite of new and innovative analytical risk insight tools designed to provide clarity around clients’ assessment of difficult to measure insured and evolving risks. With the tools, its clients better understand their risk management needs and are prepared to approach insurers, even for the first time, for new or increased coverages, creating new premium flows for the Asian insurance market.

The broker’s Cyber Quantified tool, launched in April 2016, is one of the most significant additions to its Core Analytics tools. Asian clients have provided feedback about their uncertainty around both the potential and applicability of cyber risk to business, and have struggled to convince stakeholders to commit sufficient funds to mitigate the risk. The broker attributed this to the lack of relevant risk data and easily understandable analytical output. It thus developed Cyber Quantified to assess the underlying cyber exposure and provide clients with the ability to clearly articulate the risk’s potential financial impact and overlay various insurance strategies to identify the optimal approach.

The model takes a robust loss quantification approach to guide clients and insurers alike. It provides insights into loss quantums that drive both privacy breach incidents and is, to the broker’s knowledge, the first of its kind to evaluate network outage risks. Dynamic and customisable technology allows for collaborative sensitivity testing around client-specific exposures with instantaneous results – such as on the fly measurement of various insurance structure.

The model also allows for quantification of the potential frequency and severity of a cyber attack with associated range of confidence levels. With visually compelling data driven decision support, it guides a client’s insurance strategy by quantifying the potential range of impacts of a single incident, through to measurement of Comprehensive Cost of Risk (CCOR) and an understanding of the true benefit of insurance. It enables compelling output for communication with internal stakeholders, such as the senior management.

The Cyber Quantified Tool utilises an extensive claims database synthesised from publicly available regulatory reports through to insurance industry claims experience. To recognise regional variations in loss costs, the tool has been calibrated to specifically support all geographies. It provides a breakdown of the expected costs for a range of data breach types. Based on predicted expected loss costs, it then uses an actuarial model based upon recognised simulation techniques to establish likely outcomes and a full picture of the impact of each insurance strategy on expected re-tained losses.

As the model is designed to be user-friendly and does not require extensive data input, other than organisation-specific information that would be readily available to risk managers, Willis Towers Watson offers the Cyber Quantified tool and advisory as embedded consultation prior to any insurance procurement, thus removing cost barriers to cyber insurance take-up.

Aon Benfield puts strategy, structure and resources in synchrony to deliver value and impact for its clients. Over the years, the Client Promise score card has provided important feedback for it to continue to deliver the very best in client service.

The broker uses proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance. Its globally-acclaimed Aon Global Risk Insight Platform (Aon GRIP) allows it to offer data insights to clients based on thousands of historical transactions. This leads to in-depth detailed analyses of different markets and the availability of benchmark reports to help them identify and seize business opportunities.

It is an active global representative across broking and insurance associations internationally, and conducts seminars and lectures at universities which boost the image of the broking and risk consulting profession. Its award-winning Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) programme is one part of its academic and industry collaboration. TSR is a leading resource for predicting and mapping tropical storm activity worldwide, and improves basic risk awareness and decision-making to contain the impact of the tropical storms.

Aon’s reinsurance revenue for 2Q2017 increased by 6%, driven by growth across every product line, including treaty, facultative, and capital markets. The quarter also saw Aon Benfield launch a range of innovative new products and thought leadership to drive revenue, including the April 2017 edition of the Reinsurance Market Outlook: Strong Capital Provides Reassurance in Uncertain Times, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the key variables in the market.

Its Affinity Insurance Services business provides cost-effective insurance products from the ”sharing” to the ”on-demand” economy. The Aon Centre of Innovation and Analytics also facilitates innovative risk research and solution development. Its hallmark integrated insurance and risk consulting approach provides a wide range of innovative risk management services to its clients.

At the heart of Aon’s work is a mission to empower economic and human possibility, and it aims to create positive social impact in the communities it operates in. Its work in sustainable energy and renewable solutions are accelerating investment in offshore wind farms and making clean sources of power more costeffective. In Cambodia, its “Impact on Demand” software – originally designed to help businesses forecast weather risks – is enabling more effective deployment of humanitarian aid after natural disasters.

It strives to help build the global workforce of the future through partnerships with organisations in various countries, such as the China Literacy Foundation, Create Foundation in Australia, and the OM Foundation in India. Through organisations like the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and United Way, it also helps communities prepare for and respond to disasters.

Lloyd’s Asia was set up as a representative office in 1999 with two service companies to support the marine and energy sector in the Asian region. Today, it has grown into 21 service companies writing risks on behalf of 23 syndicates across 47 lines of business. With a five-year CAGR of 15% and a 10-year CAGR of 32%, its growth has outperformed the Singapore general insurance market.

As a regional hub for reinsurance, 90% of premiums written by the market are generated from the wider Asian region, reflecting the depth of its expertise and familiarity with the region. Lloyd’s provides insurers with efficient and effective access to multiple sources of capacity through capacity pooling vehicles such as line-slips and consortia. It has a comprehensive and robust market oversight regime which balances proactive oversight and financial management with an innovative and entrepreneurial culture. Delivery of profitable growth with a five-year average combined ratio of 91% is evidence of its strong underwriting discipline.

Embracing technology, its shared services platform outsources back office processing functions and provides the market with timely, accurate and efficient reconciliation of premiums and pro-active credit control. The service was expanded in December 2016 to process claims. Now, 33% of Lloyd’s premium is managed via this service. The platform supports the subscription model and benefits the wider market. Lloyd’s Asia’s experience was instrumental to its “Future Cities: Building Infrastructure Resilience” report published in March 2017, which introduced three new approaches to help cities and insurers work together to build greater urban resilience.

Its engages in discussions with governments and insurers. In April this year, Lloyd’s presented a whitepaper to the Singapore Prime Minister’s office, which proposed various initiatives to further develop the city-state as a hub for marine (re)insurance. It is represented on the International Maritime Centre 2030 Advisory Board, which is responsible for the future direction of Singapore’s marine industry.

Lloyd’s is a founding partner of the Cyber Risk Management Programme: a precompetitive research programme led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that aims to foster an efficient cyber-risk insurance market in Asia. In May 2016, Lloyd’s together with MAS, and the UK Government signed a statement of intent to support the growth of insurance markets across the region, leading to the creation of a proof of concept for an Agricultural Weather Index for Asia in conjunction with UK Met Office and Guy Carpenter. The next phase focuses on developing innovative insurance solutions based on crop and meteorological data.

In October 2016, Lloyd’s spearheaded the Dive In Festival which brings together the industry to promote and enable greater diversity and inclusion. It also supports local communities and boosts the image of insurance in society by supporting worthy charities. In addition, its contribution as a partner of the Pan-Asia Risk and Insurance Management Association (PARIMA) and support of the development of young talent in the Singapore market via internships all help to boost the image of insurance in society.

Having established RGAx Asia as its innovation accelerator, RGA is already seeing its venture paying off. The reinsurer, together with technology startup CXA, is developing a methodology to provide companies with an aggregate health score based on the overall health of its workforce and a forecast of its future premiums. This allows employers to increase control over their future costs and to develop an ROI from their wellness and benefits programmes.

In Japan, RGAx partnered with a machine learning/AI company from Silicon Valley to digitise health checks in Japan and to automate steps of the underwriting process. The reinsurer’s “Claims as a Business” initiative was expanded across Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. RGA developed a unique rules engine that leverages a client’s current health claims and initial underwriting results to generate leads that are pre-qualified as standard or loaded, allowing insurers to effectively target customers who have made claims and are typically uninsurable with pre-approved insurance solutions.

In Korea, RGA developed Care4U, a senior health management service that provides one-on-one personalised care. Notes summarising health status are sent to both patients and their children via an automated system to provide peace of mind to all parties. In Taiwan, it introduced two market-first products, one offering premium discounts based on biometric results and health status improvements, and the other providing cash rewards as a percentage of gross premium based on average daily steps, measured by a wearable device provided by the insurer.

In September 2016, a client in India went live with a new risk scoring model (RSM), developed by RGA India to identify potentially fraudulent behaviour based on historical industry claim experience. It was the first predictive model to be developed using AURA, RGA’s e-underwriting platform.

Among a host of critical illness products launched throughout Asia, RGA rolled out groundbreaking products designed specifically for pre-diabetics and Type 2 diabetics aged 30-65 in Singapore.

RGA’s industry leadership was recognised when it was ranked #1 by ceding companies on NMG Consulting’s 2016 Business Capability Index and #1 for market share for individual new cessions in Asia for the fifth consecutive year. This recognition highlights the reinsurer’s focus on clients and success. The reinsurer conducted research focused on actionable insights and held over 200 seminars and training sessions to explore new ideas and meet client needs. These included its Asia Risk Seminar in Bangkok in October 2016 and RACE (RGA Academy of Continued Education), an ongoing underwriting and claims training and certification programme in India.

Through its initiatives, RGA continues to make life insurance more inclusive, innovative, relevant and exciting.

Allianz Ayudhya Assurance PCL has been at the forefront of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives for over a decade. Its vision of “Knowledge Contribution to Thai Children” represents its drive to give underprivileged children a chance to learn more.

To date, over 66,000 kids have benefitted from these opportunities to learn outside of their classroom. Allianz Ayudhya Pa Nong Tiew Bangkok and Young Guide is a project that has given 46,000 students insights into Thai history through visiting temples and museums, while being accompanied by the insurer’s agents, customers and employees. Young Guide, an extension of the project, allows students to undergo training to be a tour leader for their juniors.

My Finance Coach (MFC) is a project involving Allianz Ayudhya’s staff which helps fifth grade children learn how to save, spend and judge needs versus wants via fun activities and games. In 2016, it brought the concept of financial literacy to the next level by introducing entrepreneurship to the kids, teaching them how to make ice cream and sell them. They run their own ice cream brand, are trained in brand design, cost and profit calculations and production, and experience being business owners. The insurer supports them as a customer, and they earned over THB200,000 through this agreement last year.

The Allianz Junior Football Camp (AJFC) lets children aged 14 to 16 nationwide with a love of football come together and compete for selection to an AJFC Asian Camp in Bali and AJFC Munich Camp in Germany, where those chosen have a chance to meet top football stars from FC Bayern. Some of these children have since turned professional and joined the Thai Premier League Academy, something that has brought great pride to their families.

This AJFC initiative is tied with a campaign, Football Field Renovation, where the insurer has renovated football fields in schools with a focus on football. Since 2015, 14 football fields in 12 provinces nationwide have been renovated at a cost of THB5 million. five thousand people benefitted, while 3,000 of the insurer’s stakeholders participated in the renovation process.

Allianz Ayudhya has also initiated a host of other CSR activities, which have directly resulted in donations to stakeholders’ preferred beneficiaries. It has helped a shelter home at Baan Poomvet celebrate National Children’s Day for the past three years. It also sets aside funds to help victims of Nat CATs every year. For the recent severe flooding in South Thailand, it raised funds from staff and agents in all Allianz entities in the country to provide help. Other activities it has organised include blood donation drives, organ donation pledges, a charity fun fair and fund-raising for cancer patients.

Allianz Ayudhya’s CSR efforts have also been honoured by Thai government entities, a sure recognition of the immense contributions it has made to the local community.

In September 2016, Bajaj Allianz launched DriveSmart, the first-ever telematicsbased service offering for motor insurance policies in India, paving the way for usage-based insurance (UBI) through the use of Big Data analytics. The service provides valuable insights to customers on their driving habits and health of their vehicle, and also allows the insurer to offer rewards and engage with its customers better by rewarding good driving behaviour.

DriveSmart integrates digital and cloud-based technology in a read-only hardware device that acts as a black box for a vehicle, connecting to its OBD-II port. The device collects data from the port, sends it to the cloud, and the analysed data reflecting driving patterns and vehicle health is presented to the customer. The insurer integrated its existing app, Insurance Wallet, with DriveSmart’s library. The app was also integrated with an on-premise data warehouse with a telematics platform, facilitating customer self-service such as geofencing, car servicing and 24/7 roadside assistance, empowering him to take measures in the event of an accident.

The arrival of DriveSmart disrupted the existing motor insurance landscape in India, which until then decided the amount of motor insurance premium based on generic parameters like vehicle make and registration location of a car. This meant that motor insurance relied on competitive pricing with few differentiating factors in the policies, compromising on the services provided to customers. Through DriveSmart, Bajaj Allianz GIC laid the foundation for UBI in India and other related innovative insurance models.

The insurer conquered several challenges in its implementation, including the need for scalability and using Big Data and machine-learning to organise the vast amounts of data, given that the OBD port sent out a lot of noise packets. Keeping costs low was also a hurdle, given that in India, premium is just 2-3% of sum insured, so promoting premium reduction was not viable. Instead, the insurer created a unique value proposition around safety, security, savings and convenience, which appeals to all sections of society, showing actionable insights on how being an economical driver could benefit the customer.

DriveSmart will not only assist the customer in making their drive safer and the device more secure; the insights will also enable cost savings and earning incentives via gamification, while traditional policies only figure in a claims scenario. The use of such technology in insurance provides additional value-based services, catering to the modern customer, who seeks personalised solutions from service providers in all purchases, communication from their purchases and additional benefits. The solution is a telematics pioneer in Indian insurance and since its launch, has been recognised by the market through over 6,000 policies sold, generating a premium worth about US$2.7 million.

Mr Wei has a track record of extensive experience and success across multiple disciplines in the insurance industry. Today, he is the Global Chairman of Aviva Digital and is one of very few Asians who have ever stood tall on the global insurance stage.

He is a strong advocate of Asia’s insurance industry internationally, and is a leading proponent of digital insurance. He believes in leveraging technologies and innovations to better serve customers, increase efficiency, improve the general public’s perception of insurance, and enhance people’s quality of life.

Mr Wei regularly promotes the image and enhances the reputation of insurance to the wider community, participating regularly in media events, industry conferences, government advisory panels and is active on social media. He is a thought influencer who shares views beyond Aviva, relating insurance to other industries, social and macroeconomic trends. He truly believes in insurance’s role to defy uncertainty and improve living standards.

In developing talent, he believes in the space-to-lead model, in creating big jobs for capable people, and in giving them room to lead and develop. In his role, he has fostered a collaborative and motivational environment, where individuals with different expertise and experiences work together in innovative and agile ways, to create industry-leading solutions for customers. He has recruited talent from diverse backgrounds – both within and outside the insurance industry – for Aviva. This is just one example of his active role in general staff development. He also engages junior staff in career discussions, participates in university campus events, and personally led the development of the Aviva Scholarship.

He led Aviva to maintain discipline in profitable growth, such as its protectionfocused corporate strategy in China, which resulted in strong growth and praises from the Chinese regulator, CIRC. He has advised several CIRC affiliates, and also chairs the Singapore Digital Innovation Roundtable in cooperation with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the UK Department of International Trade.

Mr Wei is also a trailblazer in developing new practices. The Aviva Financial Adviser client service model in Singapore, the new digital insurance partnership with Hillhouse/Tencent in Hong Kong, which brings in leading customer analytics and access, and the partnership with Founders Factory in the UK stem from that spirit, as do Aviva’s digital garages that were set up across several cities worldwide within 24 months. It is in no small part due to his efforts that Aviva has transformed from a 321-year-old institution to be among the most advanced digital insurers in the world today.

In a career spanning more than 30 years, Mr Tucker has built an unparalleled track record of significant achievement and contributions to the development and growth of the life insurance and asset management industries in Asia. He has provided leadership to two of the world’s leading insurance providers – Prudential plc, which he helped establish and served for 25 years, and the AIA Group, which he led for seven years – and touched the lives of countless people.

He foresaw tremendous opportunities to cater to a growing middle class’ life insurance and asset management needs as Asia started to boom in the late 1980s. Thus, he convinced Prudential plc to invest in regional life insurance operations, and remained committed to expand and invest in the region even through the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

Over a 10-year period, Prudential expanded to Vietnam, India and China. Under him, the insurer introduced unit-linked life insurance, and inked the region’s first long-term distribution partnership between a life insurer and a bank (Standard Chartered Bank), establishing an industry model for subsequent bancassurance agreements in Asia.

Mr Tucker also made a huge and lasting contribution to the AIA Group. He was appointed Group CEO and President of the company in July 2010 and led its recordbreaking IPO in October 2010. Under his leadership, AIA produced an outstanding track record over seven years for consistently delivering high quality profitable growth and increasing shareholder value.

He moved AIA from a centralised “command and control” organisation to a decentralised model, where country teams are now empowered to make decisions while being held accountable for results delivery.

Under him, AIA launched the Real Life Company, its first-ever brand position. He also created the AIA EDGE team in 2013 to identify new and emerging capabilities to accelerate AIA’s growth, and introduced the groundbreaking wellness programme AIA Vitality to Asia

Mr Tucker’s legacy is immense. The PCA he built today currently generates more than GBP2 billion (US$2.58 million) of new business profit and GBP1.5 billion of earnings. He left AIA in its strongest shape ever, with VONB more than four times that reported at its IPO. AIA’s share price has trebled since IPO and the insurer is now the second largest life insurer in the world by market capitalisation. His values, work ethic and ability are undisputable. For millions of people in Asia, Mr Tucker is the architect behind the provision of their much-needed life insurance coverage.