The customer is king

The decision by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) to focus board member Andreas Berger on its core German and central and eastern European (CEE) markets, as well as its Mediterranean and African regions, should be good news for risk managers in the German-speaking corporate risk and insurance market. Andreas Berger’s renewed focus on Germany and CEE markets, along with the AGCS’s parallel effort to simplify its management structure and focus on further developing closer relations with customers, should make the insurer more approachable, flexible and easier to deal with. If Mr Berger can deliver a more user-friendly and innovative partner for the German risk management community, with a sharp focus on claims, he will be on the right track. As part of the shake-up, Carsten Scheffel takes over Mr Berger’s former responsibility for AGCS’s growing Asian book. But Mr Berger retains his AGCS board management role with specific responsibilities for distribution, sales planning and ‘customer-centricity’, as well as for the insurer’s African and Mediterranean business. But his focus is sharply trained on the German and CEE business business that accounted for some 22% of AGCS’s €7.6bn gross premiums written in 2016. Mr Berger described this decision as a “no-brainer”, given the importance of this region to the group and the fact this is his ‘home’ market. The insurer was actually born in Kigali, Rwanda, and also has a close affinity with South Africa. But most of his adult life has been spent in Germany. Mr Berger joined AGCS as global head of market management and communication in 2006, the year that Talanx acquired Gerling. He has played a leading role in the growth and development of the Munich based group ever since, joining the AGCS SE Board in 2011. While retaining his board-level duties, Mr Berger is clearly delighted to have been given the opportunity to roll up his sleeves and drive the business in his home market. “I know this market very well. I come from this market and I think clients and brokers know me too. I retain broad responsibilities at group level, but this is a very important market for us because of its size, complexity and profit contribution. If we had hired someone externally to do this job it may have taken half a year to get into the role. The key aim is to get closer to the customer and this is what I have been focused on for some time. So this was a no-brainer really,” he explained. “We spent a couple of months testing the market, talking to our customers in depth and found that it made sense. We took out a management layer to help with faster decision-making and implementation. We are able to respond faster to customer needs. I stand for customer-centricity at AGCS so what we have done is simply respond to what our customers want,” continued Mr Berger. This detailed research carried out among customers for AGCS by a professional research firm matches exactly the findings of our own annual European Risk Frontiers survey, and confirmed what Mr Berger thought based on his constant and close contact with customers and brokers. “Customers want the process and administration to be faster and more efficient, they want to see innovation in certain areas and they want to engage in product development. The interesting part is where this change is happening. The point of contact remains the risk and insurance manager but also we find that we are increasingly talking to the core business. This means that the role of the risk manager is becoming more relevant to the group. Big strategic decisions are being made in all industries and risk-based decisions are being made before the risk transfer element, of varying structures, is brought to the table. We are bringing other services to the table too,” said Mr Berger. Claims is a fundamental area that needs very sharp focus and can provide a key differentiating factor in such a competitive market, according to Mr Berger. “Capacity is abundant currently and a risk manager can shop around. But certain risks are becoming more difficult to place at a given price, so it is about more than just price,” he said. “The customer- and broker- need to ask: why are we buying capacity from a certain carrier? You know that you can get much more than simple capacity from us – it’s the whole experience. I believe that claims handling is still very much undervalued in this industry. This is the moment of truth for the insurance manager when they are in front of their board facing a major event. But the experience can be very different from carrier A to carrier B. The approach to claims can really make a difference,” explained Mr Berger. Pre-loss activity can be the deciding factor and AGCS is focusing a lot of effort on this area. “You have to include the claims people in the tender process to demonstrate what happens if the policy is triggered. It is much better if this is done face to face with the person who signs the cheques. The more that is written down in the service level agreements, the better. Customers need to be aware that practices do differ between markets too, such as London,” said Mr Berger. Soft market He is one of a rising number in the commercial and corporate market who believe the prolonged soft market is here to stay and is the result of a structural shift. This means that customer-centricity is more important than ever. “In this environment you have to basically respond to what the customer asks for. At the same time, you have to take away the administrative burden from the underwriters so that they can focus on analysing and pricing risks. This frees up resources for new tools and approaches. We are transferring a lot of the administrative burden to Allianz teams offshore. We are at the start of a journey but the results are promising,” said Mr Berger. And this is where new technologies come into play, he continued. “You need to use new technologies in core competencies like underwriting, claims and sales. To do this, we are partnering with technology companies to help find ways of doing a better job in a better way. This is being done with Big Data,” he said. Cyber Cyber is an important segment in which new technologies can be used to the benefit of all. This is also an area in which insurers such as AGCS need to listen to their customers, who do not want off-the-shelf products thrown at them as carriers seek to build a new business line. What they actually want is tailored solutions for their specific needs, which augment their existing coverage. Mr Berger said this is exactly what AGCS is doing. “The whole market needs to be raising awareness of this risk at the c-suite level and the cyber solutions need to span lines of business and leave the silos behind. This is more than just a first-party or third-party approach. You need to understand the exposures of all operations across the group. The coverage needs to be adapted to the exposure of the customer. You also need to add services such as crisis communications to mitigate reputational damage,” he said.

The customer is king

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