Cornerstone Insurance is harnessing AI to transform customer experience and drive insurance adoption- MD, Stephen Alangbo
Managing Director, Cornerstone Insurance Plc, Stephen Alangbo
The Managing Director of Cornerstone Insurance Plc, Stephen Alangbo, speaks on how the company is continuously innovative and boosting insurance confidence through technology among other things in this interview with NIKE POPOOLA
Cornerstone Insurance won the African Insurance Company of the Year Award at the African Insurance Organization summit this year. With this recognition, what has been your approach towards addressing low insurance penetration in the country?
We want to appreciate our stakeholders for supporting us to achieve this milestone as African Insurance Company of the Year. You will also understand that as the African Insurance Company of the Year, insurance penetration is very key to us. I also need to remind you that as cornerstone, we have won the award of the Innovation Company of the Year, many years ago. But putting these together, what made us to achieve this milestone has been our restlessness, our determination to be able to achieve insurance penetration. It’s also important to note that last year, we had the four awards relating to Innovation Company of the Year. Now, what gave us this mileage is our determination, our restlessness. The problem in Nigeria is insurance penetration is very low, and we as an organization have identified, what we can do to be able to make the difference.
What are those things?
Number one is, we’ve seen the place of technology. Today, technology is in the hand of the old man, the young boy, and young girl in school. Now, when you compare banking to insurance, the adoption of banking products is very high when you compare to insurance, and we are looking at what contributed to this. We have identified the importance of technology insurance. That also will assist us to meet the needs of our people. If you bring a product that people don’t need to them, it takes a long time for them to buy. So, at Cornerstone Insurance, we are using technology to be able to identify this. A lot of work is been done in the area of technology. We have Artificial Intelligence (AI) being built. AI is everywhere so we are saying should we use AI to be able to, first of all, address some of the things that hinder insurance penetration. First one is distribution. Can we develop through improving on Artificial Intelligence and technology to be able to see how we can make distribution very simple. When there is simplicity in this distribution, there could be possibility of adoption. We also want to use the technology to be able to achieve, identify the needs of our potential client. If we use AI to identify their need, then we give them the product that they use. We also use technology to build products that meet the needs of the people. We use the products to be able to improve our processes where speed is what people need.
How do you boost transparency and claims payment with tech?
Transparency in processes is what people need. Efficiency in claims payment is also what we are prioritizing. We are using technology to be able to build our processes to ensure that we satisfy our customers. Ultimately, we look at what to do to make Cornerstone the choice underwriter for all the potential customers or insurance customers. And we put all these together, we know it’s easy to achieve this goal of achieving insurance penetration.
How are you taking your innovative products to the insurance public with tech?
We believe in product funding to be able to make people to be able to buy their products and attach insurance to it. We believe in product design through data analysis to be able to see what are the products that will meet the needs of the people, and we give the products to them. We have gone into partnership with organizations such as insurech, brokers stand alone, telcos and this is making Cornerstone to be different from every other organization. Remember that we are Insurance Company of the Year. We want to stand by it by differentiating ourselves in the marketplace. So, we are also building capacity as an organization, building capacity to be able to ensure that we have a real understanding of insurance. So you see, when it’s easier for you to know the product you want to sell to those who need it, you will be able to identify their needs because of the knowledge that you have. You will give them the product that they need. In addition to that, you will observe that we have a model office in Lekki in Lagos. You can walk into Cornerstone at no cost, do your transactions, buy your insurance policies, and that’s bringing us closer to the people. So these are some of the things that we have done to be able to ensure that we don’t only differentiate ourselves, we satisfy the need of the customer by bringing the product to them through technology, through product innovation, through artificial intelligence.
You have adopted Artificial Intelligence in offering services to your customers. How does this tech work for insurance?
The AI is actually an omni-channel virtual customer service platform to be able to relate well. So, one of the areas where we have identified that value can be delivered, is in the area of customer engagement and communication. Because, you know, when we’re looking at the pin points and the areas of challenge, we identify that in the customer engagement space, there is a great lot of pain on them. Customers are trying to call in to get information and all of that, trying to get product knowledge and buy, how do I get this done? And you find that there’s a wide gap there. So that was why we came up with an omni channel, interactive system that can step in. It’s virtual, and it’s also omni channel because you can contact it through any medium of communication that you can think of, SMS, email, whatever you understand, and it’s able to answer your question. Now, the interesting thing about it is that the engagement on that platform is also integrating to our core system. But before you are given that kind of information, there is a process of validating the identity of the client. Either you ask for the date of birth, you ask them for certain information. So, once those information match, then the info, whatever they are requesting for, if it is sensitive, can be provided to them. So, like I said in the presentation, that is stage one of the engagement to solve, because customers want information when they need it, the customer do not want to say, okay, wait. Let me get back to somebody or get you information. No, you know, it can be frustrating. So we’re looking at something that will close that gap of communication and make it as instant as possible. So that was the idea behind that.
Now the second phase which we are looking at is to make it conversational as we deploy technologies, AI that can support real life communication, recognizing the natural language processing, where the system can now take your voice. It’s already, we are actually in the simulation stage right now. And the advantage of that is that, that system will not be tired. It is available 24 by seven, 365, days a year, and that gives customer that comfort, that assurance that he is dealing with an organization that really has his interest at heart. Where you are, you can now talk to a system, and respond. He’s able to understand and he’s able to respond to you. And how is that made possible? Because we already have a large language model that I talk about, the pool of information. Data is relevant for AI. So the more the data you have, and then you ingest everything into that model, it is able to search within the speed of second and provide information to whatever request you want. And you also know that there is also a learning part of this commercial machine, learning from previous engagement in order to improve on future interactions.
