Insurance industy next target of digital disruption

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: With "innovation" the new buzz word after yesterday's statement much of the focus is on bankrolling start-up companies, commercialising their products and then keeping the skills and intellectual property on home soil.

But already the changes gripping the world through digital disruption are being felt closer at home by regular consumers.

Uber has rocked the taxi industry, just as AirBnB has challenged hotels.

Now the insurance industry is having to change with the times and more savvy customers.

Zia Zaman, chief innovation officer for the insurance giant MetLife Asia is speaking with our business editor Peter Ryan.

ZIA ZAMAN: Insurance is ripe for disruption.

We're modernising the way we think about insurance by putting the customer at the heart of all of our innovations.

Whereas in the past insurance was really about providing a death benefit to a spouse or a loved one at the end of one's life, we're actively looking at ways in which we can make life and health insurance a more active part of an individual's life, by actually extending their life, making it fuller or richer, to help them lead longer, thicker lives.

PETER RYAN: At the moment a lot of people leave their life insurance policies or their superannuation documents in a filing cabinet or at the bottom of a drawer and don't think too much about it, but is that changing with the greater information that people now have at their fingertips?

ZIA ZAMAN: We as an industry have to change our thinking to be more innovative, whether it's mental health, whether it's resilience, managing a chronic disease, or simply living a more mindful life.

These are the kinds of things that might give that user, that policy-holder, that member a reason to say, hey, help me now, and think about what other things I can get out of my super or my insurance company.

PETER RYAN: Now insurance is all about managing risk, but what you're looking at is that in the future, or now, that it's going to be about modifying behaviour.

What are some of the examples there?

ZIA ZAMAN: First is simply awareness; making people aware of some of the choices that they make with regards to their health can help prevent or even avoid lifestyle diseases.

You mentioned behaviour modification, and it was a big pharma executive who actually told me that his next blockbuster drug will have less of an impact on health outcomes than the next great behaviour modification program.

PETER RYAN: Are you also talking about things like smoking? That would be behaviour modification, because that's been the very big issue in the type of premiums that people have to pay.

ZIA ZAMAN: We aren't really targeting smokers at this point.

What we really want to do is to find pools of individuals who may have specific conditions, either genetically or due to some other chronic disease, and find a way for them to manage their condition, whether it's managing their stress, their high blood pressure, their glucose count, and making them more insurable, making them a lower risk factor.

I say it's the difference, Peter, between the old way of doing it, which was pooling risk - putting risk all on the table, slicing it up and selling it - versus sublimating risk, making something hard go away.

PETER RYAN: And so what does this mean for consumers? Is that going to mean that some consumers or people who buy insurance policies might get lower premiums in return for modifying their lifestyles?

ZIA ZAMAN: I'm more interested in finding a way to address the vast majority of the population who have things that might be not exactly perfect with their cover or their risk, and help them manage those risks.

So it is about lowering premiums, of course, but it's also about making sure that some of those people who are uninsurable or kind of under-served by our industry find a way to be included.

PETER RYAN: Given the digital disruption that we've seen with taxis, on Uber, AirBnB for accommodation, is this a matter of survival for the traditional insurance industry?

ZIA ZAMAN: There is always disruption around the corner in every industry in which I've worked.

I've been in Silicon Valley for many years and do believe that software is eating the world.

But in the insurance industry I think there's two areas we need to watch out for: The first is the front-end. We don't engage with our policy-holders or our members quite frequently enough.

We're changing that. What we're doing is we're using digital disruption and innovation to give our policy holders a reason to engage with us more frequently and giving them some value.

But the second thing is around risk. If we can figure out ways to be more intelligent about pricing risk, then that could become a revolution in insurance. We could disrupt or be disrupted, I say.

PETER RYAN: So the insurance industry has to do this, given that there are a lot of smaller competitors around that could become a lot bigger and pose a threat.

ZIA ZAMAN: Non-traditional competitors seem to be closer to our customers.

And therefore, as insurance companies we have a lot of data and relationships, we have great agents who can work with our policy holders, harnessing that data to give a more contextual experience is our future.

And I think there's a possibility to work with some of these start-ups that have some interesting innovation so that we can innovate better for the customer.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Zia Zaman, chief innovation officer for the insurance giant MetLife Asia. He was speaking with our business editor Peter Ryan.