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It’s  ALL  about  the  customer    The  US  insurance  market  needs  to  change  to  adopt  a  customer-­‐focused  approach  and  to  create  a  more  engaging  and  personal  user  experience.  Multi–channel  distribution  is  key,  and  requires  a  new  and  unified  enrollment  and  distribution  platform  with  a  single  customer  view,  shared  and  coordinated  enterprise  content  management,  business  rules,  data  analytics,  and  predictive  modeling.    Modern  technology  solutions  allow  the  legacy  divide  of  front  and  back-­‐office  to  be  seamless,  to  be  shared  and  updated  online,  with  enhanced  customer  self-­‐service  reducing  the  need  for  data  input,  improving  customer  response,  reducing  costs  and  creating  lasting  efficiencies.  A  unified  SaaS  platform  that  can  join  up  rather  than  replace  existing  systems  and  share  data  and  content  can  vastly  improve  customer  understanding  and  engagement,  whilst  substantially  reducing  data  processing  costs.    The  same  SaaS  platform  can  easily  be  re-­‐configured  and  branded  to  provide  multi-­‐channel  marketing  and  distribution  for  worksite,  affinity,  direct  to  consumer  and  agent  assisted  sales  with  the  significant  advantage  of  a  unified  customer  view  across  ALL  channels.    Unlike  other  more  customer-­‐focused  markets,  the  insurance  industry  seems  to  have  taken,  literally,  Harry  Truman’s  words:      “If  you  can’t  convince  them,  confuse  them.”    So  how  do  you  convince  customers  to  buy  insurance  without  the  help  of  a  sales  agent?  Customer  data,  analytics,  and  the  ability  to  ‘test  and  learn’  are  all  essential,  as  without  them  it  is  not  to  accurately  measure  results  or  to  make  continuous  improvements.    It's  possible  to  conduct  'test  and  learn'  in  real  time,  such  that  thousands  of  marketing  messages  can  be  tested  across  different  customer  groups  to  optimize  ROI.  And  because  any  number  of  marketing  messages  and  combinations  can  be  created,  supported  and  tested  concurrently,  self-­‐learning  algorithms  can  do  the  analytics  for  you,  continuously  monitoring  results,  learning  what  works  best,  and  favoring  the  messages  that  deliver  the  best  results.  The  goal  of  real-­‐time  data  analytics  and  content  management  is  to  steer  and  influence  customer  behavior  in  the  same  way  that  a  knowledgeable  sales  person  would.  The  benefits  of  getting  it  right  are  substantial,  regardless  of  the  distribution  channel,  as  ultimately  Insurance  Carriers,  brokers  and  customers  have  the  same  interests.  The  difficulty  until  now  has  been  creating  a  unified  platform  that  can  join  the  dots  and  create  a  more  efficient  market,  built  around  the  customer.        

   

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The  reality  in  the  new  digital  age  is  that  customers  will  quickly  vote  with  their  feet,  leaving  and  not  returning  when  a  customer  engagement  experience  is  poor  and  impersonal.  Even  worse,  they  may  post  negative  feedback  on  social  media  sites.  The  acid  test  is  the  number  of  customers  purchasing  and  recommending  your  site,  and  how  this  improves  over  time.      

Afinium  believes:  ‘If  you  can’t  measure  it  you  can’t  fix  it’,  and  this  is  the  essence  of  customer  centricity  and  engagement.  Data,  analytics  and  customer  insights  are  critical  to  understanding  and  improving  the  customer  experience,  and  increasing  sales.  Engaging  in  a  dialogue  with  reality  (customer  data)  is  the  essence  of  this.    There’s  much  talk  about  Big  Data  -­‐it’s  everywhere-­‐  and  has  become  something  of  a  buzzword.  Even  the  insurance  industry,  which  has  lagged  behind  other  sectors  like  Fast  Moving  Consumer  Goods  (FMCG),  has  finally  woken  up  to  its  importance.  But  there  are  several  challenges  to  using  data  effectively  to  drive  revenue:    

A. There  is  so  much  data,  not  just  traditional  data  but  behavioral  data  and  data  exhaust,  the  footprint  left  by  customers  and  advisors  as  they  interact.  How  do  you  collect  it,  what  parts  are  important,  what  should  be  retained  and  what  discarded?  Many  insurance  carriers  have  legacy  systems  and  have  limited  ability  to  interface  directly  with  customers.  Many  also  use  outsourced  enrollment  solutions,  often  managed  by  TPAs  or  brokers.  So,  customer  data,  which  has  the  greatest  value,  may  not  be  available  without  change.  

B. The  next  challenge  is  finding  the  relationships  and  patterns  in  the  data  that  will  lead  to  valuable  insights,  directly  measurable  results  and  ROI.  

C. Data  is  most  valuable  when  it  can  be  acted  upon  immediately  to  steer  and  influence  client  behavior.   Its  value  decreases  with   time.   It’s   the  data   insights,   the  nuggets  of  gold  hidden  inside  corporate  vaults  that  are  so  valuable.    

D. The  ultimate  goal  is  to  collect  and  analyze  data  in  real  time,  and  use  this  to  steer  and  influence  ‘live’  customer  behavior,  for  instance  during  the  sales  or  enrollment  window,  or  during  a  marketing  campaign  as  clients  interact  with  your  websites  and  inquire  about  products  and  services.    

 The  ability  to  collect  and  analyze  data,  and  to  use  these  insights  and  learnings  to  change  web  content,  prices,  process  and  even  call  center  interaction,  is  equivalent  to  winning  the  Nobel  Prize  in  marketing.  However,  within  highly  regulated  industries  like  US  financial  services  the  additional  challenge  is  ensuring  that  the  personalized  content  and  policy  information,  including  the  correct  compliance,  legal  and  state  consent  wordings  are  also  delivered.    So  scalable  distribution  requires  a  unified  distribution  and  enrollment  platform  with  shared  enterprise  wide  content  management,  AND  a  configurable  rules  engine  to  provide  guaranteed  compliance  across  millions  of  web  interactions,  even  though  the  language,  content,  and  price  points  of  each  one  may  be  uniquely  personal  to  that  customer  or  group.    

   

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The  solution    The  good  news  is  that  setting  this  up  is  not  as  difficult  as  it  sounds.  Rather  than  replacing  legacy  systems,  Afinium's  Stream  web-­‐interface  makes  it  simple  and  easy  to  connect  them.  Rather  like  the  plumbing  in  a  house,  it  can  join  disparate  systems  to  allow  data  to  flow  seamlessly,  further  reducing  data  processing  costs,  whilst  creating  a  single  view  of  the  customer.  Stream  can  use  this  data  to  dramatically  enhance  the  customer  experience  with  existing  website  sites  and  enrollment  systems,  and  to  create  new  branded  web  sites.      Stream  becomes  the  enterprise  wide,  shared,  customer-­‐facing  content  management  and  enrollment  solution.  As  a  secure  cloud-­‐based  solution  it’s  quick  to  set  up,  and  completely  configurable.  This  allows  insurance  carriers  to  follow  the  same  processes,  to  link  and  share  data  with  legacy  and  third  party  systems,  while  maintaining  complete  control  of  data  and  content  management,  and  being  able  to  respond  immediately  to  sales  opportunities  before  they  are  lost.      Stream  is  a  Configurable  Market  place  for  carriers  and  distributors,  which  allows  you  to  put  your  customers  and  brokers  at  the  very  center  of  what  you  do  by  joining  your  internal  and  external  data  and  software  points  to  create  unity  and  customer  intelligence.      Stream  becomes  the  central  point  for  client  and  web  interactions,  data  and  analytics,  replicating  existing  sales  and  enrollment  sites,  and  allowing  real  time  content  so  be  served  based  on  ‘live’  data  analytics.  It  allows  ‘test  and  learn’,  such  that  thousands  of  marketing  messages  can  be  tested  concurrently  across  different  customer  groups,  providing  valuable  insights,  and  allowing  the  most  effective  marketing  message  to  be  delivered  each  time  based  on  client  interactions  and  behavior.  As  a  result  sales  and  marketing  ROI  are  guaranteed  to  improve.  After  all,  the  market  never  lies.    

For  more  information  contact:  Robert.paterson@afinium.com  or  Jim.ouimet@afinium.com    

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

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WHO ARE AFINIUM?

Afinium was established in 2012 as a result of the acquisition of two former software companies and personnel that have spent over 20 years in creating CRM systems and programs for a wide variety of sectors and industries spanning Asia, Europe and the Americas

MANAGEMENT TEAM

•Robert Paterson, Chairman. 25 years in financial services & software development in the UK and USA. Created the leading web-based employee benefits platform in the UK (Mybenefits), which was later sold to Aegon. Co-founder in Afinium,

•Matthew Hooper, CEO. 30 years in sales and marketing. Left Diageo in 1989 to found Interfocus Group, building it in to a £85 million, top UK 10 marketing agency, with global blue chip clients, selling in 2003. Ex-Chairman of MAA, Co-founder in Afinium.

•Andrew Allsopp, Chief Technical Officer. 15 years in technology sector including 9 years in financial services designing technology solutions initially with AEGON Benefit Solutions as CTO 1999 – 2006. software architect for FleX 2006 – 2008. Co-founder in Afinium.

•Markus Rafferty, Deputy Chief Technical Officer. Over 10 years in the Technology sector. Senior and lead Developer for leading UK online retailer my-wardrobe.com, CTO for Bright Network

•James Ouimet, President Marketing and Sales. 30 years in financial services. Director, Personal Insurance Marketing at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, President & CEO at Kentucky Home Mutual Life Insurance Company. Vice President Brokerage Sales - Medical Life Insurance Company leaving in 2005 to start. James Consulting Group – Owner/Consultant. Co –founder in Afinium.

•Roslyn Hurt-Steverson - Senior USA Project Manager. 18 years in insurance & financial services; 5 years in the public and non-profit sectors. Information Technology Project Coordinator at AIG in Employee Benefits, Affinity Benefits and Voluntary/Worksite Benefits, 2002-2013. PMI-Certified Project Manager.

   

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What is Stream?

Stream is a unified self-service, rules based, enterprise SAAS platform that allows the delivery of any number of sophisticated and regulated financial products in a highly customer centric, personalized and compliant manner to any number of end users simultaneously. It provides seamless distribution, marketing and enrolment capability across Affinity groups and Associations, as well as Worksite and Direct to Consumer.

With the inbuilt ability to analyze customer and behavioral data in ‘real time’ it can steer and influence purchase behaviour such that it optimizes sales and marketing performance. Stream’s ability to work across different business units provides greatly enhanced data quality, analytics and market insights that can be applied enterprise wide and instantaneously.

With no requirement for bespoke vendor software development or IT skills to operate, Stream delivers 99% of what a Customer requires to better their business, out of the box.

Stream allows users to:  

Build and Manage Sites More Efficiently:

• Create and manage any number of individually branded Affinity groups and Associations on a single unified technology platform that allows immediate changes and updates to be published to individual web sites, products, TPA’s, or across the group.

• After the initial set up / training websites can be created in hours, and changes made in minutes without requiring IT or external support.

• Flexibility to create Exchange type websites with guided product selection, eligibility, pricing and recommendations, and educational tools to facilitate sales.

• Give certain rights/permissions to people or departments to create, or review creation of client portals.

• Work collaboratively, saving time and money, by delegating management/ publishing rights to compliance, marketing, TPAs, Associations.

• Work automatically (and self-optimizes) on any platform, pc, mobile, tablet etc. • Integrate with call centers / TPAs / live chat/ and share enrollment data to allow

remote completion of partial applications. • Allows ALL data to be saved and re-visited, including real time alerts and reports to

allow immediate follow up and recover lost sales. • Create compliant e-signature, on pc, tablet, or phone.

   

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Differentiate / Increase Sales: • New business tool – create new web portals for Associations / direct marketing with

better user experience, more functionality, data analytics and marketing functionality.

• Increase sales by offering insurance products in a highly customer-centric, personalized, and compliant manner, and to any number of consumers simultaneously.

• Stream any content of rich media in any format (i.e. video), as well as avatars and guided help, to enhance each customer experience.

• Make real- time changes to communications content, layout and products to optimize sales & marketing ROI for each person based upon previous outcomes.

• Make immediate changes to compliance updates, state consent notices, prices, marketing messages and offers, review these changes, and go ‘live’ at the push of a button.

• Conduct ‘test and learn marketing’ in a live environment using different messages and automatically deliver ‘best’ message to optimize marketing ROI.

• Use Stream’s inbuilt algorithms and reporting to optimize sales and marketing or export data and analytics for further analysis.

• Provide detailed analytics/ ROI and information and recommendations to TPAs and Associations based on what works best.

• To identify eligibility, calculate pricing, and provide personal reasons why a customer may wish to purchase additional products or coverage (up sales and cross-sales) in the way that the TPA’s best sales person would.

• Carve out ’real estate’ on the portal for Customer’s client use, i.e. for internal messaging, association member communications.

• Provide every TPA with their own unique websites, and each end user with their own personal portal to keep policies, make a claim, receive news, marketing offers and updates etc.

Improve Performance and Sales: • Quickly set up / self-configure new cases/sites without technical or IT support, saving

time and money. • Allow any nominated users to make ‘controlled’ self-service changes for greater

speed and efficiency. • Rapid census data up-load, with reflective questioning to identify product eligibility,

personalize communication, price, underwriting and the enrollment experience for each customer.

• Optimize sales even during ‘live’ open enrollments using inbuilt data analytics and self-learning algorithms.

• Inbuilt ‘Test and Learn’ allows multiple messages / content / rich media or screen layouts to be tested concurrently thousands of times to optimize products and

   

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marketing, creating hugely valuable insights that will lead to continuously improved ROI.

• Ability to report on whatever you want, data, transactions, behavior, trends, customer insights etc., and export data for further analysis. Then upload any ‘big data’ insights into Stream to test and validate in the real market.

Simplify Admin & Data Processing: • Through APIs, allow for any census / customer data to be pre-loaded, interrogate

underwriting, integrate with Call Centers, social media, send client and behavioral data in any format to anywhere, for though processing, data analytics, marketing, reporting etc.

• Map the customer data to carrier PDFs, whilst sending the data electronically for through processing / policy issue, therefore avoiding the need for the customer, TPA or carrier to re-key ANY data.

• Middleware and data configuration tools can join up the front and back office by allowing faster re-configuration of sales / enrollment processes, and allow data to be mapped in any format to allow simplified integration with legacy / third party systems. Stream is the most flexible and advanced platform on the market, designed to meet the demands of both today’s business and end users. It allows for the creation of numerous branded websites that deliver one to one personalized relevant communication focused on improving marketing and sales ROI, and reducing costs through better systems and data integration.