Innovation- From Spark to Scale
12/13/2020
At Zurich, our experience is that for innovation to be successful, you need to start with the problem you're trying to solve - then look for solutions. Starting with technological solutions can produce really exciting things that nobody wants. Within my team, known as the ‘Innovation Foundry’, we are often approached with solutions – but we have to take the time to strip the idea back to the problem that we're trying to solve.
Here are some examples of innovations we’ve developed in the UK.
FaceQuote
FaceQuote is a tool developed by Zurich which guesstimates a user’s age via a selfie, before calculating how much life cover would cost per month based on the age suggested. Once a user has been given a price, they can continue the sales journey via www.zurich.co.uk.
Being part of such an agile team raises interesting possibilities. The problem we were trying to solve in this instance, was that brokers told us that we weren't perceived as very innovative within the marketplace. Consequently, FaceQuote was simply designed to be more interactive and engaging for our life insurance customers.
We built the tool in just two weeks and we've had over 80,000 hits on that service. So this is a great example of incremental innovation - a series of small improvements or upgrades made to existing products and services. It was also a really interesting way of trying to attract a wider audience.
Zurich Municipal Hub
Technology is changing how we all work and the technology we're already exposed and accustomed to has paved the way for us to innovate further. Zurich has introduced a new Municipal Hub, designed with the public sector customer at the heart. It's personalised, designed with customers in mind.
For each claim, customers are able to view everything about that claim and the policy information. The hub also includes a timeline of the events surrounding the claim, provides access to related documentation, payments and recoveries.
We also encourage customers to provide us with feedback on the new hub, in order to help develop future enhancements at www.zmhub.zurich.co.uk, all available on a variety of devices.
Commercial Property Internet of Things (IoT)
Currently customer data is frequently untapped and underutilised. With our significant expertise and breadth of capabilities – we will be piloting a new service, providing customers with a view on energy consumption and risk insight using their existing building data to help better manage their physical assets.
Zurich’s proposed solution includes installing a telematics device across large property portfolios, in order to gather comprehensive and secure data. This data will allow the customer to identify inefficiencies in order to cut costs and reduce the risk of business interruption.
Launching in the early part of next year, Zurich will provide a piece of equipment that sits over the top of some of our client building management systems.
At the end of the 90-day trial, we will come back with a health report for the property, explaining the findings and where there are opportunities for customers to improve energy consumption.
If you or your client would like to be included in the pilot scheme, please contact your Risk and Insurance Consultant.
Zurich hot work Smart Permit pilot
Joseph White, Innovation Consultant at Zurich Insurance
Hot work is frequently used during construction, renovation and maintenance, including planned and emergency repair works – it includes brazing, torch cutting, grinding, soldering and welding.
We see a relatively small number of hot work claims a year, but these incidents often result in large losses. Fires involving hot work, spread rapidly and can cause momentous property damage and complex injuries. Home Office data obtained by Zurich under Freedom of Information shows that between January 2015 and March 2019, fire crews in England attended 1,587 construction fires – of which 28% were caused by hot work, or other sources of heat.
In a bid to help to dramatically reduce the frequency of hot work fires, Zurich have developed a Digital hot work permit. The digital, web-based tool has been designed to help both customers and their contractors improve management of the hot work process on site and prevent the likelihood of fires arising.
Features include a site manager dashboard to provide oversight of all permits and their status, and an area for contractors to upload photos of the work before, during and after the job and a final fire watch timer.
The pilot phase is designed to run alongside existing hot work permit procedures, with Zurich providing the training and support throughout its duration. The pilot will be ongoing with customers until the end of 2020 with a full scale roll out planned in 2021.
For more information about anything mentioned in this article please speak to your usual Zurich contact.
