Robert Ritter and Syed Zaidi, Sales Manager in the Sales & Business Development department at Actineo, a Verisk business, give an insight into current challenges for the insurance industry and possible solutions. At the interface between customer and product development, the two sales experts play a key role in the mediation and development of new products and services at Actineo.

AM PULS: Mr Ritter, Mr Zaidi, you have been working together in the Actineo sales team since last year. What goals have you set for 2023?

Robert Ritter: Automation and digitalisation as well as sustainability are important topics for the insurance industry this year. People want sustainable solutions that at the same time meet the demands they are accustomed to from everyday life in terms of digital offers. The insurance industry has the challenge of always taking both trends into account, so that it can continue to meet the increased expectations of its customers and improve the customer journey.

Syed Zaidi: We want to help drive the ongoing transformation in claims management and accompany our insurance customers on their journey. Together we can master the challenges in the insurance market.

AM PULS: Where do the products and services that Actineo offers the insurance industry come into play?

Robert Ritter: On the one hand, we employ highly qualified staff with insurance expertise and, on the other hand, we develop cross-sector solutions in digital form in order to offer insurance companies one-stop regulatory assistance and thus become part of the claims journey.

Syed Zaidi: Claims handlers already want to work on one platform without media discontinuities instead of using different applications for each process - from the first notice of loss to fraud detection and payment processing. This is what drives us in the design of the claims ecosystem that we are developing in cooperation with Verisk in continental Europe.

AM PULS: A relatively new business area at Actineo is the internal system support of insurers by in-house experts. Why, after the digital hype of the past few years, are customers again asking for personnel support in claims settlement and benefits processing?

Syed Zaidi: Digitalisation has numerous advantages, such as increased productivity. However, it cannot help to overcome all challenges because not all processes are digital today. In the insurance industry, we see a symbiotic process handling in which processes are regulated both digitally and manually by employees. In bodily injury, the focus is also on damage to people, which cannot be standardised across the board.

Robert Ritter: At Actineo, we call the answer to this the "right touch approach": digital processes are complemented by the expertise of our doctors and nursing experts. The human component can never be completely taken over by a system or an AI. In addition, we provide insurance clients with our in-house claims and benefits teams, which provide operational support in the client's claims system and take over all or part of the claims and benefits settlement. The depth of integration is determined by the client.

Syed Zaidi: As soon as we cooperate operationally and have set up a highly qualified and efficient settlement, the next step can be to develop digital solutions for processes that support insurers in their digital transformation.

AM PULS: How will Actineo continue to offer the insurance industry innovative solutions with added value in the future?

Robert Ritter: The insurance industry will increasingly deal with topics such as modernisation of the IT landscape, cloud use, embedded insurance and customer experience. We see ourselves in the role of an operational service provider that also assumes a strategic consulting role. Actineo therefore deals with future topics in the industry at an early stage - among other things in regular exchange with the insurers themselves - in order to be able to offer ready-to-use solutions when they become relevant for insurance companies.

AM PULS: Thank you very much for the interview.

Photo: ACTINEO GmbH

Source: AM PULS – Das ACTINEO Magazin (Ausgabe 13 | März 2023)