Innovation and digitalisation – we are building the future

Building on these initiatives in the core business, UNIQA is providing additional momentum aimed at continually adapting the business model to current requirements. The overriding objective here is to be able to inspire today’s customers in the future as well.

Innovation – developing into a service provider: This strategic initiative is concerned with further evolution of the insurer value chain from providing just coverage to being a fully-comprehensive service provider. This transformation, which is closely linked to the digitalisation of the industry, includes a bundle of different measures. They range from analysis of innovative business models from outside the insurance sector to selective investments in start-ups in the financial and technology sector through to collaborations with incubators.

In 2017, UNIQA dealt intensively with the topic of newer and younger companies in the financial services sector – so called “fintechs” and “insuretechs”. The objective of these initiatives is to use the innovative strength of these emerging ecosystems and companies to develop new ideas and technology, thereby ultimately being able to offer new services and products to our customers. As a corporate partner of various incubators and start-up initiatives, UNIQA works with young companies in a variety of projects to create the first innovative solutions, such as the self-learning chatbots for customer service or new finance and service solutions in the financial sector. In addition, UNIQA has made initial investments in young fintechs in order to cooperate and to try out new business models with them. Examples include “Twisto”, a Czech provider for online payment options, “FINABRO”, a digital consultant for private savings and long-term investments, and “fragnebenan.at”, a neighbourhood platform. These activities will continue as part of the UNIQA innovation programme in the years to come.

Digitalisation – rethinking the business and service model: Our service concept and also keeping the promise to the customer in the digital age are central to this strategic initiative. Realignment of customer contact points and downstream service processes are at the centre of this, since communication channels and customer requirements related to quality, response times and service expectations will also undergo a significant transformation over the next few years in the insurance industry. UNIQA has to rethink its own business and service model from the customer’s point of view given this level of disruption to the market environment. Amidst UNIQA’s leading position in health insurance, we are placing a particular focus on the area of health

In Austria, the focus of UNIQA’s 2017 digitalisation initiative was, in addition to the modernisation of core insurance systems, to set up a new Digital Team that (keeping the customer’s perspective in mind) develops and implements new customer solutions. Based on the growing service expectations of an increasingly mobile society, new digital forms of communication (e.g. chatbots) were developed. At the same time, the new myUNIQA app and myUNIQA portal have resulted in numerous mobile options for customer service and reporting claims. Both the app and the portal will be rolled out during the first half of 2018 in Austria as a pilot market.

On the international level, the focus in 2017 was on the digitalisation of sales. In addition to the creation of tools used to issue policies online (e.g. in the Czech Republic), this also included the modernisation of the country-specific websites and the online product offerings. Furthermore, the first projects for expediting customer processing in Austria as well as in international markets were implemented through the use of RPA (robotic process automation) which significantly reduced the processing times.