SPP – a Swedish life insurance company, is now launching Sweden’s first full-digital occupational pension offer. “A completely new IT platform and a battery of customer-friendly digital solutions lay the foundation for meeting the customers’ need for simplicity and flexibility,” says SPP’s CEO Staffan Hansén in a press release. At Itello, we like the statement. It is the result of our collaboration in recent years.
Agile and iterative development of the customer dialogue
A critical success factor for SPP’s digital pension plan was, according to Hansén, to involve the customers in an early stage. – It has been an agile and iterative development process with ongoing user tests of prototypes. Our customers’ input has been crucial to ensuring that our full-service occupational pension plan offer hits the right. We will continue to develop the services in close cooperation with customers and users,” says Hansén.
Sustainable pension solutions require automation and digitisation
Constant change is propelling the insurance industry. Digitisation, automation, sustainability perspective, continuous price pressure and ever-increasing demands from authorities for increased transparency and control. The challenges set high requirements for life insurance companies being able to change business models, customer dialogues, offers, products, and internal working methods.
SPP offers a wide range of sustainable pension products for companies and individuals. They have for a long time worked purposefully to invest the savings in a more sustainable a direction that shapes better pensions and a better world to retire in. An essential prerequisite for the future, we think of Itello. Another perspective on sustainable solutions is seamless processes without manual handles that stop the process. It saves time for customers and intermediaries through a simple and clear digital dialogue. Bobs’ your uncle and you have eliminated the need for kilos of paper to get the desired information and document all the steps in the process. An efficient and highly automated administration is also a prerequisite for being able to offer market-leading cost-effective pension solutions.
With SPP’s digital occupational pension offer, we enable a fully digital sales process where SPP the customer is offered a fast, smooth and efficient service with digital signing. In Sweden called BankID. We already have concrete examples of this helping us attract new customers. In connection with the turn of the year, we were contacted by companies with the need to sign customised contracts during the same day. It showed that SPP was the only player who had the opportunity to deliver under the strict premises, in some cases with sales cycles on initial contact to underwritten and issued occupational pension plan in under one hour, says Michaela BruneheimHead of Insurance/SPP.
The transformation project that created opportunities for digital business
In 2015, SPP began its significant change and digitisation journey by replacing inflexible and outdated IT systems with the policy administration system Inca from Itello. Through the migration of existing insurance policies to a common modern IT platform, SPP gained access to integrations and automated processes, as well as the very best prerequisites for building future business. Besides, they acquired increased manageability, improved conditions for compliance and predictable costs. With Itello’s digitisation solutions, SPP creates effective digital dialogues with intermediaries, corporate and private customers as well as useful integrations with partners. Together we form a cost-effective administration, as well as adaptability and flexibility that makes SPP equipped to support both the current and future business success.
Itello is proud to be the strategic partner of SPP to offer the market’s best IT platform and through this enable SPP’s aggressive digital transfer as one of the industry’s most innovative players. With a complete digital offering, SPP has taken a big step to move its business from industry 3.0 to industry 4.0 through a potent combination of customer focus, process efficiency and innovative application of digital technology, says Henrik Allert Head of Digital Channels/Itello.
The transformation to the modern platform will give SPP many benefits to meet business requirements such as:- Increased efficiency and automation in processes and routines- Accelerate new offers and launch them on the market- Improved and simplified internal control and compliance- Strengthened ability to work in the industry’s increasingly complex digital value chain- Cost efficiency by using standardised solutions and IT support
Digitisation creates clear customer value and enables utterly new business
The transformation to the new platform has already streamlined the administration of the existing operation. SPP has historically used intermediaries for its distribution, such as tied-agents. The wins implicate many procurements and deals that must be managed cost-effectively for good profitability and create the ability to invest the assets in the best possible way taking into account Solvency II.
With the new platform, the very best conditions are given to win new procurements and to create entirely new business and collaborations. Here are some examples:
Gajda – behavioural individual information for your occupational pension
In conjunction with Tjänstepensionsdagen “The Occupational Pension Day” September 27th 2017.SPP launched the robot Gajda to 4,000 customer employees. Gajda is an individualised, objective chatbot based on research on how the brain most easily embraces retirement information, designed to help the company visualise the occupational pension for the benefit of all its employees and help them take control of key choices in their occupational pension. In October 2018, SPP won the prestigious prize “guldkanten” from The National Government Employee Pensions Board (SPV) for the best pension information in 2018.
Pensure – digital intermediary creates customer value
Pensure is one of the new types of intermediaries who have procured occupational pension plans and insurance products and offer a fully digitised process. Pensures business model gives small and medium-sized companies access to occupational pensions plans – at prices so low that they have previously only been reserved for large companies’ with large pension premiums. Instead of insurance fees, the company pays an annual license fee for access to the digital administration via Pensure. Five clicks and then you can sign up for an affordable occupational pension that invests your saving in a sustainable direction at SPP. Entirely without any paper forms.
Fortnox – challenges the intermediaries and builds customer loyalty
Fortnox, which offers cloud-based accounting services to 200,000 entrepreneurs, now offers its customers a subscription service with SPP. The product is unique in its kind by peeling off several steps from the manual handling. Since the terms of employment and salary data are in the accounting and bookkeeping, the monthly premiums are created from the correct basis. Since the process is automated, SPP can offer valuable pension products and a wide range of sustainable funds, while keeping the fees low.
Sustainable unit linked insurance – new platform keeps costs down through automation and smart functionality
Throughout 2018, SPP Fonder had large net inflows to its unit-linked insurance savings. Simple, affordable and sustainable funds seem to be a winning concept that holds in every stock market climate. However, low fees result in flat revenues, which means that costs must be kept low and not driven by increased volumes.
In 2017, SPP replaced its existing system for administering unit-linked savings and fund order management with Inca. SPP received a modern trading platform with the settlement of fund orders and reconciliation with all external fund managers. At the time of the acquisition, it was possible to offer dynamic portfolios and management services based on algorithmic trading rules.
Also, the project won the prestigious industry prize of the Trophy of the Year 2017, which is awarded by Itello.
The future becomes what we make it
It is incredibly inspiring that Itello achieved SPP’s confidence to carry out this transformation together. What SPP has succeeded with, in implementing and enforced in a short time is exceptional and worth paying attention to. We are convinced that this is just the beginning of the transformation that the industry needs to make towards industry 4.0. Customer-focused, adaptable and data-driven organisations are a prerequisite for life and pension companies to remain relevant and competitive in the future.
Henrik Allert Head of Digital Channels/Itello
Follow the development of what is happening in the Swedish and Nordic life insurance market at Itello Insights:
