Todd Pruzan, Senior Editor for Research and Special Projects at Harvard Business Review, recently sat down with Lee Boon Huat, Group Chief Digital Officer at Prudential plc, to talk about how Prudential uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to enhance the levels of insurance coverage as well as financial inclusion for communities in Asia and Africa. What follows is a transcription of the highlights of their conversation.
TP: Thank you so much for being with us today.
LBH: It’s a pleasure, Todd. Thank you for having me.
TP: I’d like to kick off this discussion by first asking: How is Prudential using technology to bridge the protection gap and increase financial resilience?
LBH: The Covid-19 crisis made people much more aware of the need to have insurance protection. For instance, it revealed that, in big spots, such as in Asia and Africa, a majority of the population is either uninsured or underinsured; unfortunately, this protection gap is likely going to widen with rising medical inflation and as people live longer. Now, however, this gap, while wide, can be narrowed, especially with the advances being made in new digital technologies.
Here at Prudential, we have spent the past few years building Pulse by Prudential, a health and wellness mobile app that has, to date, garnered approximately 38 million downloads across the world.
Via this app, we can reach out to many more people across Asia and Africa, and it allows us to deliver very affordable solutions to them. For example, in Vietnam, we have offered cancer insurance for as little as $0.07 a day. And in Indonesia, we have partnered with an e-payments company to provide Sharia insurance across 34 provinces.
TP: Well, those are some very striking numbers. Would you please tell us a little bit more about how Prudential is using data and artificial intelligence (AI) to address these challenges and to attain better health outcomes?
LBH: Sure, Todd. To ensure people can live well for longer, preventive health care is key. Now technology can motivate people to adopt a healthier lifestyle and undergo regular health screenings by providing them with data, insights, and nudges. This is one reason we invested in Pulse by Prudential some years ago.
Via Pulse, we’ve developed many features to help people adopt a healthier lifestyle. Take, for example, the Health Check feature that uses AI to help users better understand future disease risks and makes recommendations regarding actions they can take to improve their health. These early actions can help mitigate the onset of chronic diseases like diabetes, which is becoming increasingly prevalent across Asia and Africa.
Another rewarding feature is the Fitness Tracker, which we use to encourage people to regularly exercise, and we reward them for doing so by offering them improved insurance coverage. Other health feature examples on the app are Symptoms Checker and Telemedicine; they enable customers to seek timely health advice from anywhere, anytime. These are just some examples regarding how we use data, tech, and AI to help drive better outcomes for our users.
TP: Those are some very interesting examples. Shifting gears slightly, Boon Huat, how are you using technology to enrich the customer experience and to capture new business opportunities?
LBH: Over the past few years, we have increasingly stepped up our technology investments and progressively digitalized our client services to improve our customer experience. We’ve also improved the productivity of our financial consultants so they can spend more of their energy on advisory services. Let me give you a few examples.
Starting with claims, we have, over time, automated the entire end-to-end claims processing journey so that we can allow our customers to access services much faster and enjoy a smoother overall experience. Take, for instance, during a claims journey: we provide our clients with a simple and secure platform from which they can receive consistent, accurate information regarding their claim status, be it via the mobile app or via the YouTube channel. This has also improved the productivity of our claims agents.
And we have developed data and AI models for our agencies, and this manifests itself in multiple ways: First, via the model, we have identified the success metrics of our agents and use that to train our agencies. Second, we also use our model to help with our recruiting initiatives. Last, to help with conversion, it allows us to match leads to agents who have a suitable profile.
TP: That’s all very inspiring, Boon Huat. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a great conversation, and I really appreciate your insights.
LBH: Thank you, Todd.
TP: To learn more, click the link below.
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