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REMOTE WORKING In association with Sapiens
COVID-19 accelerates shift to remote working Tim Crossley - Business Development Director at Sapiens, the software solutions provider to the insurance sector, argues that the shift to remote working caused by the pandemic offers the opportunity for the insurance sector to move onto a new level of relations with customers and efficiency. Forget B2B! Ditch WFH! Welcome to the H2H or Human to Human era! Recent events give us the perfect opportunity to build much stronger more trusted relationships with customers and business partners. Are we going to seize this opportunity to use technology to make work more personal in the ‘next normal’ or will we revert to the traditional work/ life segmentation? A recent McKinsey survey suggested that we “have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks” and the digital outreach that many of us have experienced with doctors and teachers confirms this. Surely no one now doubts that digital engagement will be the main form of customer interaction as it currently is with our friends and families, and appropriate automation will support a more personalised yet more productive dialogue? The Marine Insurer P&I Special Edition | July 2020
SECURITY BREACH I received a notification of an ‘important letter’ from my US equity broker last week. I was asked to log on to their website to retrieve the letter. Of course the first thing I had to do was remember the password as I am not a ‘day trader’ in any way shape or form! After a bit of huffing and puffing (including setting up the new two factor authentication secure access they have instituted during COVID-19) I got there and opened the letter with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Ironically the letter informed me of a security breach. What shocked me was that the breach originated from the closure and decommissioning of some data centres in 2016 and therefore might have happened soon after. Now this is a multi-billion dollar turnover bank I am talking about. Guys, shouldn’t you be informing me more promptly than four years later? ‘We sincerely regret any inconvenience or concern this matter may causes you’ doesn’t cut it for me. Free access to the Experian IdentityWorks service was offered but is truly ‘shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’. What does this have to do with marine insurers and their use of technology? Very simply, we are seeing unprecedented acceleration away from on-premise systems and into the Cloud, away from centralised administration and towards permanent remote working, away from manual and towards automated, and away from a front office/back office mind-
