360F and Zurich Middle East have debuted a  pioneering, deeply innovative solution, ZurichPro, which digitizes the entire financial planning  process, and helps Zurich to meet its business sustainability goals. 

Mr Walter Jopp, Chief Executive Officer of Zurich Middle East, says, “With ZurichPro, we have  digitally transformed the entire financial planning process, from product recommendation, to  authentication and processing, making it easy to work and very efficient for partners to work  with Zurich Middle East. ZurichPro minimises the time it takes to obtain and process  insurance products, and virtually eliminates paper consumption. And now, adhering to  compliance, ZurichPro enables us to seamlessly distribute product sales online.”

ZurichPro was the result of a collaboration with 360F, a highly committed and valued  innovation partner. 360F enables financial institutions to create data-driven, scalable financial  advisory by applying intelligent automation and data science to build trust and drive  engagement.

Michael Gerber, CEO of 360F, says “We brought to Zurich Middle East our capability in remote  delivery and experience in delivering innovation across at least three time zones with time  constraints. Our strong actuarial, operational and technical expertise helped them to meet the  BOD49 requirements. We also introduced innovative and divergent thinking that brought in  unique sales attributes such as greater personalization with 360-NeedsProfiler.”

Key attributes of ZurichPro include:

• Omni-channel distribution

Zurich Middle East can now network with multiple partners, across multiple channels,  creating an omni-channel distribution model to facilitate banks and other partners in the  Middle East to on-sell our insurance products online.

• Optimal, hyper-personalized product recommendation

ZurichPro draws on decades of actuarial data to help financial planners to optimize their  product recommendations and to sell hyper-personalised, comprehensive product  selections to their clients. 

• Instant Pricing

ZurichPro ensures that financial planners receive the right price at the right time.  Digitizing the financial planning process has significantly decreased the time it takes for  a financial planner to configure and issue a quote and to complete the application.  Whereas a quotation could take 10 days to issue, it can now be offered in minutes.

• Automated medical underwriting

Previously, the financial planning process required a manual underwriter to review and  produce a decision. Now, at least 45% of medical underwriting is determined  automatically.

• Instant payments

Financial planners would acquire a client’s credit card details and write them on paper  forms, which were then manually input by admin teams for collection purposes. Now  credit card payments are transacted instantaneously via an online transaction on  ZurichPro

• Authentication

In the past, a customer and the distributor made declarations in a prescribed email  format. Now digital signatures are collected in a few clicks via Adobe’s DocuSign  software, and similarly, the KYC (Know Your Customer) documents are uploaded online 

• Transparency

ZurichPro helps customers to clearly, and unambiguously, understand the products being  recommended, and comprehend what they are buying

• Compliance

ZurichPro offers high levels of compliance, including the UAE’s Board of Directions 49  (BOD 49) regulation, which came into effect in October 2020

• Paperless process

ZurichPro digitizes and streamlines the financial planning journey, so that it is paperless.  Previously, the application process consumed 50 to 200 pages, which has been reduced  to less than 14 pages. Everything that is needed to apply for a policy is now within the  platform rather than on paper forms, such as the underwriting questionnaires. This helps  Zurich to meet its sustainability pledge commitments for the UN Global Compact Business  Ambition for 1.5°C pledge.

• Addresses the ‘Needs Gap’

ZurichPro integrates a 360F solution, 360-NeedsProfiler® into the YourLife and YourCare solutions, enabling ZurichPro to bring customer-centricity to a highly personalised level.  NeedsProfiler® helps a customer to identify their financial protection needs, to help  address the perennial ‘needs gap’ problem. The information gathered helps the financial  planner to make hyper-personalised, comprehensive, product recommendations. 

In summary, ZurichPro makes it possible for Zurich Middle East to sell insurance products  online and without face-to-face interaction, helping financial planners to comply with  mandatory social distancing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.