PREVENTION: VITALITY AND INSURANCE TECH

Transforming insurance customer experience using apps and smart tech is a passion for Generali Engagement Solutions

Managing Director at Generali Engagement Solutions

GmbH Peter Stockhammer understands the importance of partnerships to help develop the best possible products and services for their customers. These partnerships link both ends of the product chain, technical expertise from outside of the insurance industry to the feedback from the policy holder.

Generali Vitality is a wellness programme designed to encourage and reward the healthy behaviours of policyholders via the provision of tools and incentives to improve their overall health and wellbeing. Stockhammer has had a long career in the life insurance space, but says he has taken inspiration from all kinds of sectors to shape his attitude to industry transformation; what has chiefly guided him is considering what can be learnt from other industries.

He says: “I was once invited to Porsche and they showed me how they build cars. They showed me what they call the marriage of the chassis with the engine. I thought, ‘It’s fascinating how they’re doing this and what we can do in issuing the policy to give transparency to the customer, and can we improve things to be faster?’.”

It’s not just limited to learning from the technical expertise of other industries, but also in balancing that with the evolution for insurance provision, enabling it to become even more customer-centric and developing a deeper relationship with policyholders.

Stockhammer speaks of becoming a ‘lifetime partner’ with Generali’s customers, utilising their relationship with smartphones as the way to become part of their life and transition their insurance interactions from protection to prevention. A tipping point for him, personally, was seeing a survey where people were asked what they couldn’t live without; less than half listed their current partner, but 97% said this of their smartphone.

Consumer insight

Generali Vitality is an exciting fusion: a historic player in the insurance space, they also develop trend-setting digital products to interact with their customer base.

As such, Generali Vitality offers a personalised approach to wellness by creating health goals and rewards based on a policyholder's current health status and lifestyle. Through the app, policyholders can earn points for engaging in healthy activities such as exercise, getting regular check-ups, and even shopping for healthy foods. The more someone engages with the program, the more points they collect, and the deeper the level of value to the rewards.

Stockhammer explains that their experience and research leads them to know how their policyholders like to use the app and the results they value the most, like the small, simple incentives.

“You have a weekly fitness activity or physical activity goal and, if you reach it, you will be immediately rewarded. There’s gamification, so there’s a wheel of fortune where you’re getting a push notification that says, ‘Congratulations, we have achieved the goal, here is a reward for you’. You can then spin the wheel and randomly get one of the awards.”

It’s this attitude to gamification and continued product improvement that excites Stockhammer, as it helps welcome an insurance provider with more than 190 years of industry experience to the cutting edge of digital transformation. It also heralds a new relationship with their customers. With such modern digital tools, customers have regular contact with their product, rather than just an initial interaction before embarking on a distant relationship that’s only rekindled when a problem arises