Muang Thai Life Assurance (MTL) impressed the judges for its efforts towards greater customer-centricity, as well as its commitment to innovation.

MTL is one of the leading life insurance companies in Thailand. It strives to reach new heights all the time. It has been the leader in new business premiums for five consecutive years and surpassed THB100bn ($3bn) in total premium for the first time in 2017, which has contributed to MTL being the second largest player in the Thai life insurance industry.

Founded over six decades ago, MTL is guided by its corporate vision – which is ‘to be the customer’s trusted lifetime partner through innovative life and health solutions by putting customers at the heart of everything we do.’

With many disruptions in the Thai life insurance industry such as new regulations, customer behaviour changes and digital technology, MTL always seeks new opportunities and is highly adaptive, often disrupting itself before being disrupted by others.

The company started Fuchsia Venture Capital to sponsor FinTech and HealthTech start-ups as a way of acquiring external knowledge and expertise. At the same time, Fuchsia Innovation Centre was formed in 2017 to support its innovation efforts.

One of the most recent innovations Fuchsia has launched is Baowan BetterCare, an innovative product that gives diabetics access to insurance for the first time and uses dynamic pricing, which rewards customers who improve their health behaviour with premium discounts. It was also the first product in the Thai life market that was developed in the insurance regulatory sandbox of the Office of Insurance Commission.

AIG has led the way in offering enhanced solutions to address both current and emerging risks in Asia, underpinned by cutting-edge technology.

AIG’s global vision permeates across its 16 markets in Asia Pacific, driving country-level strategic imperatives aligned to a global mandate. Each territory delivers upon its strategy through a comprehensive product portfolio, underwriting excellence, best-in-class customer service and claims management.

AIG serves over 10 million customers across Asia Pacific in commercial and consumer insurance. In 2017, Asia Pacific represented 29.7% of AIG’s global NPW, testament to the importance of the region, with the most significant NPW y-o-y growth in Australia of 17.4% and China of 9.8%. AIG’s key differentiators include the creation of unique products, digitalisation of end-to-end solutions, enhanced risk management, integration of innovative technology and AIG’s claims promise. Underscoring AIG’s accomplishments is its use of innovative technology, helping reduce and manage risk, and optimise capabilities to serve customers better. From telematics and robotics to virtual reality, AIG is at the forefront of bringing progressive innovative solutions to market. AIG continuously enhances its product offering and launched a number of market-leading solutions across Asia Pacific to address current and emerging risks.

For example, it launched Dragonshield Cyber Crime Protector 21st Century in Hong Kong to tackle gaps not covered by traditional crime and cyber insurance policies. The new wording extends coverage to include losses arising from cyber extortion, social engineering and certain cryptocurrency fraud. AIG’s cyber breach response endorsement provides insureds with fast and efficient access to leading law firms and vendors, equipping insureds to respond effectively to mitigate the impact of a cyber crisis as it unfolds. AIG has conducted client workshops to simulate a cyber attack and test response protocols, enabling clients to build an organisational capability to respond to real threats.

Having set the pace with innovative products and service offerings, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance addresses changing market trends by becoming the market trendsetter. It seizes every possibility of putting technology-driven solutions to use, ensuring seamless and hassle-free processes for its customers.

InsurTech is not a buzzword anymore at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. It has seeped right through the company’s business model, making innovation the new normal. Recent technological trends such as AI, machine learning, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and robotic process automation (RPA) have all been incorporated with significant potential within the company’s systems and offerings to streamline insurance operation and enhance customer experience.

For the industry in general and Bajaj Allianz GIC in particular, digitalisation in the last couple of years has enabled insurers to communicate directly with customers by facilitating the sale of personal lines of business and the creation of simple product and purchase mechanisms.

Bajaj Allianz GIC is a digital insurer that is built on three pillars – creating unique experiences for customers, delivering insights to sales teams and agent networks and enabling digital work styles for its employees. The year 2017-18 saw Bajaj Allianz GIC enhancing its digital capabilities to create interfaces that provide an independent and superior customer service experience and unlocking the potential of customer, intermediaries and employees.

Today, the company has leveraged technology and digitisation and brought in the self-service and claim settlement platforms that did not exist a few years ago. These platforms have empowered customers and business partners to take insurance-related decisions independently while making insurance solutions available anytime and anywhere. The company also employed digital tools such as blockchain and AI to simplify insurance transactions and improve their service and claims proposition.

RGA Reinsurance has achieved excellence through its continuous innovation in introducing market-leading new solutions across Asian markets, supported by its outstanding research capabilities. It has pushed industry boundaries to make life insurance coverage more simplified and accessible to everyone – regardless of health status, age or past claims history.

RGA Reinsurance’s relentless client focus and innovative efforts mean understanding clients and addressing their needs - even those they sometimes do not know they have.

In a dynamic insurance landscape, the reinsurer is helping insurers embrace data and digital technology, and guiding them through the product development process to launch innovative initiatives and develop future insurance solutions.

RGAx, the reinsurer’s innovation accelerator focusing on InsurTech and industry disruptors, created an AI solution to digitise health checks in Japan, enabling customers to use their mobile phones to take a photo of their medical records and send it to their insurer. This automates some underwriting steps and incorporates new sources of information and rating factors, resulting in more accurate risk rates for clients and a simplified and improved customer experience.

RGA continues to expand its credit-based insurance score globally. TransUnion TrueRisk Life is being rolled out in India and currently in the process of being validated in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, its fast algorithmic simplified track risk-scoring solution calibrates financial data and allows companies to provide enhanced solutions, including reduced underwriting offers for bank customers.

The reinsurer continues to expand solutions for impaired lives, including driving healthy behaviour through wellness solutions. Building on the launch of the first diabetic product last year in Singapore, it worked further to launch first-in-market plans like critical illness plans for Malaysia and Singapore, and a fully integrated impaired lives wellness solution in Hong Kong, which offers individuals with diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia an all-round solution encompassing medical, critical illness and life protection.

SCOR’s P&C division has been a steadfast presence in APAC, achieving steady growth with positive technical results every year since 2012, thanks to its long-term partnership approach with clients, its provision of excellent services and products, and innovating through the market’s challenges and changes.

SCOR is the fourth largest reinsurance company globally, with gross written premiums of EUR14.bn ($17.4bn) in 2017.

SCOR has been strongly rooted in Asia for nearly half a century. In 2017, about 17% of the group’s business was underwritten in Asia Pacific. Since February 2017, its presence in India has been strengthened with the opening of a composite branch office in Mumbai.

With a total GWP of EUR1.085bn for fiscal year 2017, the APAC region accounts for nearly 20% of SCOR Global P&C business. Annual average growth has been +14.5% since 2009, with positive technical results every year since 2012. The P&C division of SCOR now serves over 350 clients in APAC and assumes over 4,000 reinsurance contracts.

SCOR P&C provides a broad product range and customised reinsurance solutions to its Asian-based clients. It has led large engineering projects and property policies, such as the construction of metro and nuclear power stations in China and all risks operational policies for large risks in the petrochemical and the pulp and paper industries in Asia.

It has also provided solutions by leading the environmental impairment liability pool in South Korea, in order to help clients manage their solvency and their balance sheets in increasingly regulated environments.

SCOR also carries out innovation, for instance in the renewable energy sector, where it is developing parametric cover which aims to link irradiation parameters. It is working clients to address market changes triggered by innovative technology through in-depth understanding of new products like ride-sharing services.

Marsh Asia has provided all-round comprehensive broking services that offer both breadth and depth, while catering to the needs of specific client segments via a tailored approach. The broker’s thought leadership and research capabilities have also benefitted diverse stakeholders in risk and insurance.

Marsh Asia prides itself on its thought leadership and differentiated research via a range of diverse platforms, including Marsh & McLennan Companies’ (MMC) Asia Pacific Risk Center (APRC) and Global Risk Center, the professional risk management associations of PARIMA and RIMS and global platforms like the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Through the APRC, Marsh provides topical thought leadership on issues its clients care about deeply, such as demographics and aging, infrastructure, climate resilience, corporate risk and governance and emerging technologies.

The broker’s Global Insurance Market Index provides a quarterly, proprietary measure of commercial insurance premium pricing change at renewal, while the leading WEF Global Risks Report (an MMC, Zurich and WEF partnership) that examines the evolving macro-level risk landscape and highlighting systemic threats is presented at WEF’s Davos meeting yearly.

Cyber has been a focus in the past year, with the broker having published a cyber handbook, and the Global Risks Report highlighting the emergence of cyber as a high probability. Marsh’s cyber practice harnesses the capability of a consortium of experts to provide objective consultation to address the cyber needs of diverse clients through its brokers, risk consulting arm, cyber security partners, preferred legal partners and the APRC. The 2017 Targeting a Technology Dividend in Risk Management report provided insights into how businesses plan to deploy technology in corporate risk management.

Marsh provides clients with complex needs comprehensive, end-to-end solutions including risk consulting, enterprise risk management, analytics, insurance brokerage and claims advocacy. It provides a tailored approach to client segments.

The Singapore College of Insurance (SCI) continues to meet the training needs of both the local and regional market through its specialist programmes and wide adoption of technology which increases both interaction and efficiency in learning.

In line with the digital transformation sweeping across industries, SCI recently launched a mobile learning app called SCIDigital. The app adopts a micro-learning pedagogy that organises knowledge into bitesized visually-impactful chunks, enabling professionals to learn a concept within minutes. SCIDigital also utilises gamification which increases active participation of learners and encourages interaction with online communities of learners.

Trade-specific agents seeking their certificates of proficiency by sitting for examinations at SCI no longer need to wait for SCI to have sufficient enrolment class numbers. This speeds up their certification process and enables them to be business-ready quickly.

Another target segment of SCI’s students are management associates (MAs). SCI has all its classes translated into digital mode. This is coupled with LiveChat boxes with lecturers in the event that they encounter topics that they find difficult to understand.

SCI initiated the international exposure programme (IEP) to provide young professionals with a broader global insurance perspective, and to allow them personally to experience how insurance entities operate in the London market. Last year’s IEP was held in London from 30 May to 9 June, with the participants being the MAs from the second intake of its insurance management associate programme.

During the two weeks, the MAs were hosted by insurance/reinsurance/ broking companies who assigned them daily attachments (allowing the MAs to shadow brokers/underwriters and observe their daily professional life), giving them a realistic view of what these careers entail and a foretaste of what a career in the insurance industry will be like. Many came away from the programme experiencing for themselves the dynamism and potential of the insurance industry.

HSBC Insurance (Asia) has incorporated gene testing into its product feature which allows customers actively to manage their health risks, particularly in the area of cancer detection and treatment.

HSBC’s 2016 power of protection survey revealed that 69% of Hong Kong people rank health as their top priority. In view of the trend and customers’ priority, HSBC Insurance Hong Kong launched its ground-breaking ONEdna genetics-based testing feature in April 2017 to give customers access to new sources of information to help them better manage health risks.

Since then, ONEdna – activated by a simple saliva sample test – has been embedded in six HSBC insurance plans as a product feature, signalling the company’s awareness that insurers are not just expected to look after customers’ financial health, but also their physical wellbeing.

In Hong Kong, HSBC Insurance was an early mover in understanding how this emerging trend could offer insurance value by placing critical decisions in customers’ hands through a simple digital format.

ONEdna provides a comprehensive analysis of customers’ genes along with recommendations for future health issues, as well as information on how customers’ DNA affects their well-being in cancer risks, health risks, dietary sensitivities and nutrient response, as well as drug response.

With an externally validated 99% accuracy rate, ONEdna also analyses 35 genes to help customers understand their risks for contracting the eight most common hereditary cancers. The results allow high-risk customers to work with healthcare providers to detect cancer at an earlier and more treatable stage.

Among ONEdna’s major breakthroughs has been its first-in-market genetic cancer-screening feature – helping those with a family history of cancer identify genetic mutations associated with the most common inherited cancers. The test results are available on an exclusive mobile app, offering customers online access anytime, anywhere.

In an effort to alleviate the many challenges of the ageing population of Taiwan, Taiwan Life Insurance has been dedicating efforts to long-term care and health promotion for the elderly since 2012, and implemented the Local Ageing Project and the Active Ageing Project in 2017.

To improve quality of life and well-being of the elderly, Taiwan Life Insurance planned the Young and Old Learning Together special project, the Three Generations Get Going Together family health day activities, and co-organised the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge - Asian Regional Competition.

Through these, young people were encouraged to enter the design challenge and use ‘new’ perspectives to resolve ‘old’ issues. Stereotypes of the elderly were overturned as new demands in Taiwan created by ageing were explored. The events promoted health among the elderly and facilitated intergenerational exchange. Family members’ strengths were also utilised to encourage the elderly actively to maintain their health and become a force for social stability.

In collaboration with the Hondao Senior Citizen’s Welfare Foundation, Taiwan Life jointly established a long-term care education centre, the nation’s first training centre with the realistic simulation of caregiving workspaces and models. In 2017, a total of 1,902 professional caregivers were trained.

The same collaboration also promoted the care and service plan for helping elderly living alone to obtain medical care. For the underprivileged elderly living alone whose family support system is weak, and who have an urgent need for medical treatment and for postdischarge care, assistance is provided to accompany such a person to obtain medical care and to complete their scheduled rehabilitation. In 2017, service was provided to a total of 233 elderly people living alone. This delayed their loss of capacity and reduced the medical treatment costs of underprivileged elderly living alone.

A poster-child for successful disruption in Asia, CXA Group radically changed the employee benefits scene in the region through harnessing the power of data analytics and AI, building the first ever such marketplace that delivers personalised insurance and wellness and empowering both employers and employees.

CXA built Asia’s first benefits and wellness marketplace capable of delivering a personalised portal that provides employees with an ecosystem of wellness and insurance products and services. The marketplace enables employees to choose their benefits appropriate to their own life stage and health needs, track and analyse their health and proactively seek ways to prevent disease. This has changed the employee benefits landscape.

The company believes strongly in the power of data and the need to deliver evidence-based wellness to employers and their employees. It does this by investing heavily in AI and big data analytics in disease risk stratification/recognition, and the development of its dynamic targeting recommendation engine and CXA insights tool. It has also adopted a mobile-first approach, and its solutions on WeChat and its mobile app were designed with mobile users in mind.

CXA’s work in deep data analytics and AI has secured it a provisional patent in the US, with application of a full patent currently in progress. This was achieved by using a unique combination of an end-to-end digital technology platform acting as a single point of contact for employees, human resource and various marketplace vendors including insurance and other health and wellness providers.

A key project is CXA’s collaboration with the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Through this, CXA’s data scientists have validated scripted statistical models on the probability of an employee cohort developing type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases. They are working with the NUS team to apply the same methodology to employees in Shenzhen, China to validate and calibrate the model for the Chinese population.

In the past year, AXA Hong Kong has engaged in several revolutionary initiatives employing big data analytics and AI/machine learning, to focus on meeting the unique needs of each customer and unleash the customer’s full lifetime value.

As with all other industries and services, the one-size-fits-all approach can no longer support sustainable business growth. Nowadays customers expect to be treated as individuals – with his or her unique needs and appetites. AXA Hong Kong embarked on three distinctive data science initiatives to meet each customer expectation at different stages of their life.

One initiative revealed that the bonding between two persons can be statistically computed, rather than relying on random attractions. Data analytics, model building, deep learning computation together with AI tools and techniques underlie AXA’s customer-agent pairing optimisation.

The next initiative – AXA’s customer retention model – employed big data analytics to consider the customer’s demographics, lifestyle, recent purchase pattern, loyalty level, and many other factors to establish an holistic customer value view. Analysing all related data, together with predictive modelling techniques to predict the successful retention probability for each customer results in a comprehensive customer retention score. This scientific and predictive (rather than merely trendreading) scoring engine, customer care centre staff could then prioritise retention efforts to the identified high value customers, achieving optimal retention results.

Since implementation, AXA Hong Kong has recorded strong improvement in both overall customer retention rate (+20% accumulative uplift as of 2017 Dec). With virtually zero increment in operational resources and expenses, the insurer recorded a total gain in customer value retained by (+ 55% accumulative uplift as of 2017 Dec).

Mr Daniel Tan Kuan Wei has dedicated himself to the promotion of risk management not just at work, but by enhancing risk management in the healthcare sector and promoting the profession in Singapore and overseas. Since 2016, Mr Tan has been group enterprise risk management (ERM) lead at the National University Health System (NUHS), an integrated regional academic health system in Singapore that delivers value-driven, innovative and sustainable healthcare. Institutions in the NUHS group include hospitals, speciality centres, a polyclinic group and academic health sciences institutions.

He rebooted NUHS’ Group ERM framework by introducing the four lines of defence risk governance concept (‘hardware’ of risk management) to enhance ERM practices in the organisation.

In the first line of defence, all NUHS institutions’ CEOs and deans are accountable for risk management. The second line comprises NUHS’ governance via a monthly senior management risk committee meeting, which offers a meaningful platform for discussion of key risks and mitigation plans.

Mr Tan works closely with the third line – internal auditors – in providing assurance to established controls to manage key risks. As the secretariat to the board-level audit and risk committee, the fourth line, he facilitates discussions with the board on risks and mitigation plans to ensure that the board’s expectations of risk management are met. A major incident escalation protocol was also developed as part of the governance framework to apprise the NUHS chief executive of significant incidents occurring at all NUHS institutions within the shortest time possible.

On the ‘heartware’ of risk management, Mr Tan provided the guidance for the establishment of the NUHS Risk DNA to build a culture of risk awareness among NUHS staff. He initiated an NUHS Group ERM community of practice, in which all NUHS institutions’ ERM leads and the NUHS group ERM office convene quarterly to share insights and best practices.

The future of the insurance industry lies in the hands of the current generation of young achievers and so it was a great relief to see such a high calibre of young professionals nominated this year for the Young Leader of the Year award.

The winner, Mr Rotha Chan, is a young Cambodian who represents some of the most inspiring aspects of the future generation of the insurance industry leaders.

Mr Chan joined Manulife Cambodia as the first agency manager in 2012 and was the first person in that country to sell life insurance, to speak about the career opportunity as life insurance agents and to recruit its first agents.

From there, Mr Chan’s rise was swift and decisive: Chief agency officer by 2016 and assistant vice president by 2017.

The reason for this enviable rise is not hard to discover when we look at how Mr Chan views both himself and his chosen career: “In the country that had been torn apart by long dragging civil wars until 1997, it has been more than working and selling life insurance to me. It has been my life mission to help restore the country through life insurance, which is seen as one of the critical tools to build a stronger safety net for the country.”

He is also canny enough to know that the future will be different from the past – and this acknowledgement is crucial to the future of the sector as a whole.

“I have been helping my advisors to embrace the digital age. From a paper application form on all new businesses, by March 2018, more than 80% of advisors are using electronic means to submit their new businesses,” Mr Chan said.

But what use is a leader of any kind without a keen social conscience? Mr Chan has been actively engaged in community causes and has instigated community initiatives, raising money through public speaking for the People Improvement Organization, an NGO.

Mr Chan also helps to raise fund to support the Jeremiah’s Hope Clinic - Cambodia that assists people with cancer, assisted in buying bicycles for poor children through Pur un Sourire d’Enfant, supported the establishment of a new public library in a remote area of Cambodia, speaks to students at the Royal University of Phnom Pen, Journeys within Community and other hundreds of students about building a successful career life and the importance of education.

Anyone who has been in the same room as Ms Rosaline Chow Koo when she is talking about the business she leads will already know why she has won the ‘woman leader of the year award’.

Her enthusiasm and commitment are almost tangible as she waxes lyrical about the CXA Group, a business that she founded and runs as CEO.

The ‘Woman Leader of the Year’ category attracted a good number of exceptionally talented candidates this year and so Ms Koo’s achievement in coming out in front is a testament to her stamina – as well as her inspirational qualities.

Ms Koo’s life story is one of overcoming odds that were often stacked against her to rise to a position of prominence in the insurance sector in Asia.

Perhaps most important of all, she has managed to gather around her a team of people who have bought into her vision of a truly disruptive force in the insurance industry.

Under Ms Koo the CXA Group has grown from strength to strength. Fundraising: CXA is now valued at over $100m after a $25m series B cash infusion from Eduardo Saverin and B Capital (BCG), Singapore Economic Development Board Investments (EDBi), Philips Healthcare and the Reinsurance Group of America (RGAx)

Fortune/Global 500 clients: CXA already attracts 53 Fortune/Global 500 clients away from the global brokerage firms.

Key hires: CXA’s success has attracted world class professionals in employee benefit consultancy, business strategy, sales, HR and technology.

On a personal level, Ms Koo make a significant contribution to the community. Most recently she has supported PinkStripes, an organisation that helps women who have taken career breaks to raise their families overcome the fear and difficulties of recently into the workforce.

Ms Koo frequently speaks on helping encourage and empower women. As a mother of two, Ms Koo understands the guilt that some mothers develop while developing their career while also raising children.

To win the personality of the year award, a nominee must display a rare mix of strength of personality and compassion.

Tapan Singhel from Bajaj Allianz General Insurance is a prime example of someone who manages to blend the two facets seamlessly. In the business environment he ensures that customers get value for their money, that the company’s business results are excellent - and he ensures that his employees get the best work environment in the country.

Mr Singhel has been associated with the GI industry for more than two decades, having joined Bajaj Allianz GIC in 2001. He has been its longest serving MD and CEO and was reappointed in 2017 to lead the organisation for the next five years. Since assuming the role, revenues have grown at a CAGR of 18.2% and profits have increased at a CAGR of 25.6%.

Mr Singhel also has an eye firmly on the future – looking at newer technologies like blockchain and chatbots to ease processes and reduce the time of service delivery. Under his leadership the company has also identified new risks such as cybercrimes and developed an offering in the form of cyber insurance for individuals.

On the gender inclusivity front, Mr Singhel also introduced the concept of all women’s branches to focus on penetration of personal lines of insurance and bridge the gender diversity gap in the Indian insurance industry.

Outside of work, Mr Singhel served as president of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, convener of the working group on non-life insurance of the Confederation of Indian Industry. He is the chairman of the IRDAI’s panel to promote e-commerce in the insurance industry and is also a member of the insurance advisory committee of IRDAI.

A father to two daughters, Mr Singhel makes sure that he spends quality time with his family, his support system and his biggest source of inspiration.