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Find out more at roboyo.global industries and technology-agnostic) to offer a very flexible approach (tailored to our size and our business), with deep expertise and the aim to coach, train, and support our business in the automation journey.”

Building a digital future

The insurance industry in general has been slow to adopt the latest innovations and technologies. But Pauwels explains that the pandemic forced a situation that has driven change across the board.

“Within the last few years, the COVID19 crisis has impacted ways of working and has had an impact on everyone. During and following the crisis, technology adoption has increased at a faster pace. And that’s why I call it ‘digital acceleration’ rather than ‘digital transformation’. Digital has always been there, it is just a matter of accelerating its utilisation and adoption. Now, employees expect a different way of working, in terms of tools and interactions with different people.”

Pauwels points out that hybrid working practices and staff working virtually has driven forward connectivity innovations – not just internally, but also externally with Zurich Insurance, its MyZurich platform having anticipated these needs from customers.

“They expect different types of services, and they expect to have them remotely. We’re offering different services, such as the MyZurich platform, which is a platform for our brokers and customers. That platform also offers a risk advisor tool, for example.

“We are commercial insurance so it’s never the same as retail insurance in terms of digitalisation. Nevertheless, we do have digital solutions that we need to offer (especially for basic activities like insurance certificates) as there is a need for that on the market.”

One of the challenges in implementing these digital solutions comes from issues surrounding data. In hyper digitalisation, where everything goes into the cloud, concerns regarding regulations and governance are often raised, Pauwels says.

“Questions you have to address about data include: how do you govern the data? How do you make sure that you control what is on the cloud? Where is the data going? Is there any leakage? How do you protect your

Mathieu Pauwels

TITLE: COO

COMPANY: ZURICH FRANCE customer? How do you protect the data of your employee? Ultimately, it revolves around governance.”

Mathieu Pauwels is Chief Operating Officer. He has 17 years of professional experience in global IT transformation programmes and in managing multidisciplinary and international teams.

Mathieu Pauwels holds a master’s degree in Finance & Business from the ICHEC Business Management School and a specialisation in Business Engineering. He also holds an Executive MBA from IMD Business School.

Other issues are raised as well, according to Pauwels – especially from a sustainability standpoint. “Digital transformation has a financial cost. But it also has a sustainability cost, because you consume more servers. It’s a different cost to paper, and you’re not cutting down trees, but there’s still that energy usage question.”

Zurich Group and Zurich France are putting in place regulations to control and monitor this, as well as strong governance to make sure they have control over the data. “You have control regarding what you put on the cloud, but the growth has been exponential for the last few years. It’s certainly an area to monitor closely.”

Digital transformation and company culture

The nature of hybrid working patterns has also changed the way teams operate and communicate with each other. Company culture has been disrupted, and taking this into consideration while transforming digitally, is a critical part of the transitional process.

Garnier, Head of UW Casualty and Motor for Zurich in France, says creating a sense of belonging and a cohesive team requires strategy. “Challenges post-COVID raised questions about how we needed to keep our employee engagement high.

“Zurich France wasn’t the only company facing this, but the way that we decided to tackle it was by putting in place a key initiative called People Engagement. We thought about ways to maintain the relationship between employees, between each other. Another aspect of that was how we maintained relationships with our clients and brokers.” Garnier says that even transitioning colleague relationships from virtual to face-to-face meetings has been considered, with the aim to re-engage people. “Keeping the engagement high is also dealing with the way of working, how we deal with the office space, and the technology that is used. The way we work now is mainly hybrid. It’s a great balance between working from home or always working from the office. So this is really a critical way of keeping the engagement high from our perspective.”

Zurich 2023 Global Risk Report

While climate events have played a part in insurers globally adjusting their risk assessments, the latest Zurich Global Risk Report has pinpointed a panoramic view of the problems facing society at this current time. Despite rapid innovations in