Inspiring Coaches

Reliably at our customers’ side

Living better together – these three words succinctly express the idea of how we would like to engage with our customers. We don’t just want to be there for them when misfortune strikes, we want to be a reliable companion offering services and innovations to assist them in their daily lives. After all, it is clearer than ever in these challenging times how important security and trust are for all of us. As inspiring coaches, we want to embolden our customers to take responsibility and find their source of motivation from within. Choosing UNIQA means choosing a better life, and that is exactly why we want to be the leading service provider in our industry.

In order to meet this high standard, we have completely restructured our customer service processes with the launch of the UNIQA 3.0 strategic programme and replaced the previous business line structure (property and casualty insurance, health insurance and life insurance) with the customer segments Retail, Banking, and Corporate and Affinity. This enables us to address the individual customer groups in a much more focused manner across the boundaries of product lines and, in addition to further increasing customer satisfaction, should also lead to a growth in premiums. The basis for this can be found in the continuous strength of the UNIQA brand – the strongest insurance brand in Austria – coupled with an attractive and easy-to-understand product portfolio, transparent pricing, efficient processes, cross-border cooperation, customer-specific affinity programmes and a wide range of digital tools and services.

Under UNIQA 3.0, we are pursuing differentiated detailed strategies and measures specific to each customer segment, and we began implementing all of them immediately after the launch of the new strategy. We made excellent progress already in 2021 and 2022, and we stayed this course with undiminished energy in 2023. The successes we have achieved give us confidence that we can truly meet our goals by the end of 2024, before UNIQA 3.0 is continued with a new strategic programme.

Market leader in Austria, further growth in CEE

From a regional perspective, we are working within Austria as part of UNIQA 3.0 to secure and expand our strong market position, especially in the area of health insurance, to strengthen profitability in property and casualty insurance and to stabilise our portfolio in life insurance. The development into a holistic healthcare provider driven by Mavie Holding, founded in 2022, supports this course, especially in the diverse healthcare market.

In CEE, on the other hand, we intend to continue to make targeted use of the great potential offered by the ongoing EU convergence and the region’s relatively low insurance density. In doing so, we continue to rely on a radical transformation of our business model through standardisation, greater transparency, hybrid offers for different channels, as well as cross-border customer-focused services. While we are building on an all-lines approach in our core CEE markets of Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and SEE, we are taking a more selective approach in the remaining CEE markets. We have launched a pilot project in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Bulgaria under the title SEE5: it is aimed at harmonising products, processes and the IT landscape on a regional level in order to improve both customer convenience and efficiency. Through this pilot project, the participating companies, which are individually relatively small, will achieve better positions in the market, opening up growth potential for them, but also reducing complexity and thus positively impacting the customer journey and profitability.

Consistent digitalisation …

An essential building block for all of this is the ongoing digitalisation of our business, an effort we have been investing in extensively for years. The main focus here lies on the redesign of our business model, including all necessary IT systems, as well as a range of digital innovations. In this way, we are not only optimising our internal processes but also simplifying the lives of our customers, who now have access to numerous digital services. This forward-looking initiative will be continued in 2024 with unflagging energy. Under the motto “Regional and digital”, we aim to be at our customers’ side, whenever and wherever they need us. We will achieve this with the most comprehensive spectrum of digital tools, but never neglecting personal, face-to-face assistance.

… and process optimisation

In the background, we are working constantly and intensively in Austria and CEE to improve our production and efficiency. This includes increasing the cross-policy and automation rate in the application process and in claims settlement as well as ongoing efficiency improvements and cost reductions. The aim is to implement the entire processing of an insurance contract – from the application to any necessary benefits – in an automatic and digital workflow. As a basis for this, we are continuously investing in the modernisation of our IT infrastructure and our core system (UNIQA Insurance Platform, UIP), our customer platform (UNIQA Customer Platform, UCP) and other central systems. In this context, we are also placing an important emphasis on IT security and cybersecurity in order to live up to this trust in us as an insurance company.

Retail: outstanding customer journey and simple products

An excellent customer experience and a clearly understandable product architecture are our top priorities and objectives in the Retail segment. We are responding to the wishes of our customers for individualisation, transparency and flexibility by streamlining and modularising our product portfolio, but also with dynamic pricing based on individual customer yield ratings. This also helps us harmonise our insurance portfolio, where we are gradually analysing profitability in all business lines and migrating to our new core system UIP.

At the same time, we have optimised our nationwide presence in Austria by expanding our network of general agencies. Since 2022, we have been supporting their sales activities with a modern, uniform – location-based but customisable – new website. With the implementation of the OMDS 3.0 standard (Österreichischer MaklerDatenService) defined by the Austrian insurance association, we have additionally created a seamless digital interface for our unaffiliated sales partners.

In order to be able to offer our customers holistic solutions for different topics, we consciously regard relevant living environments as “ecosystems”. Following the health ecosystem, in which we have already successfully diversified the Group-wide service spectrum under the umbrella of Mavie Holding (more information can be found starting on page 48 ff.), we are currently in the process of establishing the topic of living as its own ecosystem. Alongside our cooperation with willhaben, we are also working on our newly established online service platform “Rudi” covering all aspects of real estate. We are particularly excited about the launch of our first product on the new UIP platform (UNIQA Insurance Platform): we introduced the market to an entirely new household insurance product in 2023 with our offering of “Private Protection for Home & Leisure”. This has enjoyed a strong reception on the market and even emerged victorious in a test held by the magazine “KONSUMENT” published by the Association for Consumer Information (Verein für Konsumenteninformation). The new product also achieved first place in the AssCompact Awards.

Another new product from 2023 garnering plenty of attention was “Accident Protection Leisure & Work”, which offers comprehensive accident protection even during leisure hours, explicitly including special sports risks. The new product is also intentionally targeted at families, as children are often not adequately insured against accidents in their leisure time. Incidentally, both product innovations have also been successfully implemented on our new core system, UIP. This further serves to enable dynamic pricing, allowing us to more effectively address the needs of the market and of our customers.

In all of this, progressive digitalisation is changing the traditional role of sales. One example is the previously mentioned UNIQA Customer Platform (UCP), which ensures comprehensive support with a 360-degree perspective in line with our seamless omni-channel strategy. Available 24/7, this makes it easier for customers to access our services and, thanks to various self-service features, easier for us to administer them. The introduction of electronic signatures via smartphones has prompted significant progress in this area; insurance claims can now also be submitted to us digitally using this method.

The myUNIQA app, which our customers can use at any time to call up information, report claims or submit medical and medication bills, continues to enjoy great popularity. The app, which was redesigned in 2023 and supplemented with an English version, is already used regularly by over 550,000 customers and was rated as one of the top finance apps in Austria last year. We are continuously adding new functionality and features.

Our benefits and customer loyalty programme myUNIQA plus continues to prove very successful, once again increasing its user base to 275,000 in 2023, its third year of operation. Many of these belong to the younger generation. With this innovative new tool, we are setting new standards for increasing customer loyalty, improving efficiency and reducing complexity.

We are also using artificial intelligence in claims processing, for example with the new “digital claim handler” introduced in 2021, which massively speeds up the processing of claims.

To focus on addressing urban target groups, we have been testing online video consulting since September under the name ReCON, initially primarily for customers in Vienna. The early results have been very promising, providing good insights for fine tuning and the eventual expanded rollout.

Together, all of these initiatives have led to consistently outstanding numbers for customer satisfaction, which was recently scored at 4.58 out of 5 points. This means that we already reached the UNIQA 3.0 target of at least 4.5 points one year ahead of schedule – but we are still working at full steam to expand and improve our offering.

Banking: market expansion and digitalisation

With generally closer cooperation as a basis, we would like to further strengthen the sale of our products via partner banks and increase market penetration in this area. The focus is on standard products: in Austria, we mainly offer property insurance through this channel; in CEE, we also offer life insurance and bundled products as collateral for loans. This means we need to simplify our product portfolio in this customer segment as well and adapt to changing customer needs. We are also striving for greater digitalisation, as in the other customer segments. In both Austria and CEE, we rely here on standardised digital sales platforms such as the UNIQA Customer Platform (UCP), from which we jointly offer financial services from a single source. The aim is to enhance our presence further through apps and other solutions, such as the sale of standardised products over the phone.

Corporate: innovative services and sales channels

The way we reach our corporate customers is differentiated by customised solutions and new approaches in sales. While we are increasingly positioning ourselves as a local insurance company in Austria, the focus in CEE is on risk engineering. We are placing more and more emphasis on the ESG-compliant design of our products and services, and we are taking ESG criteria into consideration in underwriting. In parallel, we are pushing ahead with the development of “green” products. We want to increasingly offer our industrial customers both in Austria and CEE services in the area of prevention and ESG, and we founded a separate company for this purpose during the reporting year. In this way, we are continuing a successful initiative on new footing: “Green Coaches” advise business customers on green topics and support them in sustainable management topics.

To target our service even more effectively, we have optimised our operating model for commercial customers over the last two years and divided our products into four clusters according to customer size and degree of standardisation. With the aim of offering added value as an “insurer on the spot”, we have also strengthened our local presence and given our experts intensive training so that they can assess risks directly on the customers’ premises and get them insured immediately. Our advisers have a risk engineering app at their disposal to help them perform this “real-time assessment”.

In the Corporate segment, we are focusing on property insurance in both Austria and CEE, as well as on tailored affinity programmes – individual offers for our customers or their employees to support them in matters relating to health and healthcare. Employee benefits in health, accident and life insurance are one example of this. Here, too, our subsidiary Mavie plays an important role with innovative concepts for corporate health solutions.

With the support of a Group-wide digital platform for underwriting, sales and risk management, we also rely on automation and digitalisation in our standard business with corporate customers. By giving this platform access to a central “product factory”, we are consolidating our strengths and creating synergies as a basis for further improving our service quality and speed.

As in the other customer segments, we are also focusing on harmonising our insurance portfolio in the Corporate segment so that we can take more efficient and targeted action and ultimately increase our earning power. To do this, we examined all lines of business one step at a time, starting with property and casualty insurance, and this has led to many profit-enhancing and risk-minimising measures in the existing portfolio as well.

Rebranding and cultural programme

Since the claim of UNIQA 3.0 should also manifest itself in our external corporate image, we initiated a rebranding for the entire Group immediately after the launch of the new 2021 strategic programme. Apart from an update of our corporate design, this also included a further development of our claim – “living better together” – as well as the development and launch of corresponding image campaigns. In 2023 alone, these included new image campaigns for Retail and Corporate customers as well as a new employer branding campaign in Austria.

Alongside this, we launched a culture programme to introduce our corporate culture to the concept of inspiring coaches. Conceived and coordinated by the Culture Office established in 2021, further progress was made in rolling out this programme over the last two years. The core aim was and remains to familiarise our employees with our vision, our strategy and our corporate culture, to spur them into action and to bring them on board on our transformation journey. All kinds of information events and workshops across all areas of the company have been helping to achieve this goal and continue to do so. We carried on with this process in 2023 as well, achieving another significant milestone with events like the Inspiration Festival.

Skaly Insurance Operations: attractive nearshoring offer for third-party customers

Founded in 1996, the UNIQA Group Service Centre (UGSC) with locations in Nitra and Prešov, Slovakia, will operate under the new brand, Skaly Insurance Operations. Going forward, this brand will increasingly also process business transactions from German insurance companies. The company, which currently employs around 860 people, is thus continuing a successful pilot project in which comprehensive motor vehicle damage claims have been processed for a major insurance company in Germany since March 2023. In mid-2023, the decision was made to expand this business across the entire German-speaking region. The project’s potential is high, as many insurance companies are facing the challenge of no longer being able to offer core processes such as issuing and cancelling policies and processing claims in the usual time due to the digital transformation and a shortage of skilled staff. In this situation, the UGSC can help by being a strong partner and taking over individual or entire processes, either temporarily or permanently. It is no coincidence that the Slovakian word “skaly”, which gives the new service its name, means “rock”.

With the UGSC, UNIQA is the only insurance company with a nearshoring centre based in the EU that can handle insurance processes requiring approval in German. This competitive advantage is now being leveraged further by expanding the third-party customer business. In addition to handling the Group’s internal tasks – around 60 per cent of all Austrian UNIQA business transactions go through the UGSC – business will now also be done with third-party customers, with strict organisational separation, of course. This will enable the UNIQA Group to further expand its locations in Slovakia and also generate additional income. By 2027, the third-party customer business is expected to reach a sales volume in excess of €20 million and have a workforce of around 200 full-time equivalents.