92 | theceomagazine.comtraditionally haven’t been covered by individual item
insurance. Baloise now offers policies for individual personal
belongings including mobile phones, musical instruments and
even model ships. These new policies don’t come with great
tracts of fine print; the terms and conditions run to a single
A4 page and aim to be intuitive and user-friendly.
Also thanks to partnerships with start-ups like KASKO,
Baloise is innovating in terms of digital tools, which make
insuring items a quick and easy process. Customers are
now able to photograph their watch, for example, and
image-recognition AI will connect the image with a network
of timepieces. With this tool, customers can ensure the
details of their watch are recorded and their policy is in
place with just a few clicks. Baloise also acquired Swiss
home-moving start-up MOVU, which produced an online
platform allowing people to arrange their items to be moved
and insured simultaneously.
Yet another update is Baloise’s Quote & Buy option,
which permits customers to review a policy and execute
the contract in under a minute. This feature came out of
a collaboration with software provider Guidewire Digital.
Baloise was the first insurer in Europe to implement such
a straightforward portal, and it continues its approach of
moving towards paperless and informal insurance policies.
While Simply Safe has a strong focus on such time-
saving, user-friendly initiatives, it also has an inward-looking
aspect and recognises the value of contented and motivated
staff. As Gert explains, a workforce enjoying what they do
will inevitably lead to greater customer satisfaction. “I think
it’s the alpha and omega of everything, to be honest.”
Baloise is close to complete staff satisfaction, with 85 per
cent of its employees agreeing they would recommend it as
the best employer. “If you have highly motivated and
engaged people, customers simply feel the difference,” says
Gert. “That’s the way it goes. If our people deploy the same
energy and enthusiasm that they do with their hobbies, then
our company will be a great place to work for. We are not
there yet, but we are on our way.”
Gert describes this strategy as simple almost to the point
of naivete, but it comes with concrete goals. For instance,
Baloise wants to be in the top 10 per cent of employers
to work for in the financial industry. It is also aiming to
see an additional one million customers by 2021, which
would be an increase of 30 per cent on its 2016 figures.
The new strategy has also ushered in a greater focus
on collaborative projects. “The days of a company managing
the whole value chain on its own are over,” Gert observes.
One such alliance is the recently launched Mobly, a mobility
platform that offers a 360-degree service allowing users to
buy a car, find suitable insurance for it, organise check-ups
and maintenance, and eventually sell it. “It’s a partnershipwe are retaining the core capabilities Baloise
has developed over a long period.”
This raft of initiatives has come out of
Simply Safe, the new strategic direction
Baloise Group announced in 2016. Gert
describes it as “a radical simplification of our
processes, products and customer interaction”.
It also involves broadening Baloise’s insurance
offering beyond traditional policies into more
holistic assistance services. “We want to
provide customers with solutions that have
insurance embedded in them,” he says.
Another groundbreaking offering is
a suite of policies that allow customers
to insure items of personal value that“Digitalisation is ultimately
about the culture and social
movement. That is where
I get my energy and passion.”
- Gert De Winter