On Friday 6 April, Montoux partnered with Deloitte to host the first Shifting Gears seminar of 2018 with a breakfast session in Sydney, Australia. Following an overwhelmingly positive response to Basem Morris' behavioral economics presentation at our December seminar, we took a deeper dive into this topic through a life insurance lens, with brilliant insightful speakers and invigorating panel discussion facilitated by Deloitte's Al Merten. The room was at capacity which was really great to see, and the feedback we have received from the audience has been outstanding.
Dr Doron Samuell, Behaviour.ai
We were honored to have Dr. Doron Samuell join us as our first speaker of the morning. Doron is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, a graduate of Harvard Business School and graduate from the London School of Economics where he completed a Masters of Behavioral Economics. He is currently working towards a PhD on the impact of personality on insurance risk at Sydney University Business School. He holds several appointments including Chief Medical Officer of Zurich Insurance, and of Allianz Life insurance. He owns and operates his own businesses, Behavior, an international Behavioral Economics consultancy and Professional Opinions, a medical risk management company providing assessment services through a panel of 400 medical specialists.Throughout his presentation, Doron touched on how underwriting is ripe for behavioral economics interventions and how it can be improved with algorithmic approaches. He spoke about the issues around customer retention, and how they can be approached with a combination of behavioral economics, pricing, and product strategies.
The slides from Doron's presentation are available for download on the Shifting Gears website here.
Nick Mingo, SwissRe
Nick Mingo is the Claims Service Specialist at Swiss Re Life & Health Australia. Nick works with the Swiss Re global Behavioral Research Unit to undertake live Behavioral Economics test and learn projects with insurer clients on life and disability insurance topics such as underwriting, health disclosure, claims, sales, customer experience and policy retention. The Behavioral Research Unit has conducted over 150 behavioral tests with over 40 clients in 30 countries.
Nick presented some great case studies from UK and US life and commercial insurers, looking at how behavioral economics was used in one case to shorten response times from doctors, and in another to improve response rates to cold drop letter campaigns.
The slides from Nick's presentation are available for download on the Shifting Gears website here.
Aubrey Sonnenberg, LifeIQ
Aubrey Sonnenberg is a successful innovator and entrepreneur. He is the founder and MD/CEO of Aon Consulting South Africa, a global leader in health care, insurance, employee benefits and product innovation & distribution. He is also founder and CEO of HealthLogix Australia, a leader in online health content management and engagement to leading insurers, health providers and employees across 3 continents. Last but certainly not least, he is also founder and CEO of LifeiQ, leveraging 25 years of global industry experience with digital and behavioral innovation to create new generation customer, employee and consumer engagement solutions.
Aubrey's presentation drew on his experience from South Africa, Australia and beyond, with an explanation of the Behavioral Activation Model which focuses on changing behavior through self determination and adoption.
The slides from Aubrey's presentation are available for download on the Shifting Gears website here.
We finished off the event with a brilliant panel discussion, expertly moderated by our co-host Al Merten from Deloitte. The panelists started by speaking a little more about how they see behavioral economics fitting into life insurance, discussing both advantages and risks of applying behavioral economics to insurance processes, with Al challenging the panelists' perspectives and encouraging questions from the audience - of which there was no shortage.
We have received brilliant feedback from the attendees of the breakfast session, with many respondents wishing the event was longer! It is a fascinating topic that looks certain to be integrated into the agenda for future events.
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