The difference between FinTech and InsurTech is one of the most frequently asked question. The emergence of modern technology in the insurance sector is now commonly called as the InsurTech. InsurTech is the sector that encompasses the companies that are bringing technological advancements in the insurance industry as well as the insurance companies that are embracing these changes. On the other hand, FinTech is something similar to the InsurTech but has a broader scope of financial institutions.
Catering to both the industries, 121Advisor was formed in 2010. Over the past 10 years the company has implemented online solutions for Referral Management with Marketing Automation, Mobile Point of Sales, Online Direct Selling, Online Claims, Agency Distribution, Online Customer Service Portals, Corporate Websites, Multi-lingual Chatbots & Robo Advisors and AI based Predictive Analytics for New Products, Lapsation & Fraudulent Claims.
“Our product is called ‘Customer First Connected Enterprise Digital Framework’ that integrates all of the above solutions.”
In 2010, ‘FinTech’ & ‘InsurTech’ words were not available, so it took a while to convince customers of the digital skills & capabilities. In 2011 the team started implementing various solutions, and by 2014 they started growing, providing solutions both for banks, insurers & takaful companies.
By 2014 121Advisor was profitable and using the profits for R&D on new solutions. Here is a graph that shows 121Advisor’s growth over the past decade.
As a CEO and a ‘technology person’, Kevin has always strived to look at new solutions to continue evolving the business. What was interesting was that he worked for an Artificial Intelligence Company in 1986, and that piqued his interest in AI. When we started seeing the evolution of Chatbots, Robo Advisors, Predictive Analytics, Behavioral Intelligence & Robotic Process Automation. 121Advisor started researching on AI solutions and the team implemented 24×7 multi-lingual Chatbots, Robo Advisors for lifestyle financial planning, as well as implementing Predictive Analytics solutions for predicting new products to buy, lapsation of policies & fraudulent claims; which are integrated with RPA solutions to trigger workflows to notify the relevant people.
We Don’t Follow Trend, We Pioneer Them
121 Advisor’s Motto
The Products and Services of 121Advisor-
121Advisor’s products & services are integrated into their ‘Customer First Connected Enterprise Digital Framework’. This enables them to create personas for targeted marketing, they can setup Persona rules to auto match and trigger RPA processes for marketing automation to reduce costs. In addition, they can create blogs that are used in targeted marketing with associated product recommendations.
Some of their services include-
- Multi-lingual Chatbot for Financial, Insurance & Takaful (FITbot)
Multi-lingual Robo Advisor and chatbot that utilizes hybrid trees and natural language processing (NLP) to engage with customers to offer a more personalized customer experience and generate more referrals.
- Web Portal Solution for Sales & Servicing (WebPoS)
Multi-lingual mobile responsive website and portal solution to enable clients to experience a unified personalized digital experience where content, sales, marketing and work management are consolidated instead of siloed.
- Referral Management & Marketing Automation (ReMMA)
Effectively and efficiently auto-assigns, tracks and manages lead refferals and conversions based on user defined workflows. Marketing automation results in personalized content delivery, targeted campaigns and engagement.
- Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA)
Allows agents to effectively plan and manage sales activity to ensure all leads and prospects are addressed. Managers can monitor real time to render assistance where necessary.
- Community & E-worksite Marketing & Distribution (CeMD)
Community portal solution allows organisations to engage with members of their community to nurture trust and create advocates thereby improving customer retention.
- Enterprise Product Configurator (EPC)
Reduce the time to market for insurance and takaful products. Built to rapidly setup product rates, illustrations, validation engine as well as automated testing module allows quick product deployment.
- Multi-channel Distribution Management Solution (McDMS)
For general agencies, IFAs, brokers to simplify operations by consolidating their diverse requirements. With built in performance management and compensation computation our clients have seen improved sales with reduced administration costs.
With the recent pandemic there is a need for more digital services for Banks, Insurers and Takaful. 121Advisor will soon be launching a Lifestyle Community Knowledge Portal that helps consumers understand the lifestyle goals (e.g. lifestyles for single, married, family, retired and my own business). The community knowledge portal will include chatbots & robo advisor to help consumers understand their lifestyle goals and recommend products, forums and are stored in a secure CRM. Consumers can opt to choose a company product (based on recommendations) and buy products online (e.g. Loans, Investment, Life Cover, General Cover) via e-payment.
The Team-
As a ‘techie’ Kevin works with his team to help them understand the Banking & Insurance processes, and help them is the design of data models. The team has a great understanding on financial services & insurance processes so that they can implement new solutions.
Among the countless interactions with their clients here is a special one Kevin highlights-
“A bank in Malaysia, wanted us to deliver a Referral Management solution in 3 months, this included defining KPIs for each product, interfacing with back-end sales, and synchronizing status of agents daily, then auto assigning to the relevant sales agents based on the referral product required. 121Advisor delivered the solution and went live in 3 months.
One of our insurance customers wanted an agent mobile sales solution delivered in 4 months, this includes product setup, quotation, and proposal, auto-underwriting and online submission to the insurer. 121Advisor delivered the solution and went live in 4 months.
With our agent distribution solution, a number of Agent Leader Corporations (ALC) wanted us to compute their commissions and bonus, based on n-tier hierarchy, manage the performance and track KPIs for agent promotion / demotion (depending on whether they met their targets), including integration with their insurance/takaful companies. Once the ALC managers approved the payments, we make online payment direct to the agents. 121Advisor delivered these solutions in 2 – 4 months, based on the integration requirements with the insurance/takaful company.”
