Generali Hellas Greece accelerates life insurance signing process with OneSpan Sign
The pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic drove many businesses to adapt their processes and adopt a fully digital approach to serving their customers. For financial institutions, the focus has been to digitize processes that once required in-person meetings at the branch with electronic signatures and ID verification. Additionally, optimizing the customer experience in these remote processes by enabling employees with the right skill sets has also been critical.
That is why companies like Generali Hellas partnered with OneSpan to digitize their business operations as quickly and efficiently as possible. With the adoption of digital signature technology, Generali Hellas was able to grow their business during a time when many of their competitors struggled to just stay afloat.
Who is Generali ?
Generali Hellas is a member of Generali Group, one of the world’s largest global insurance solutions and asset management providers. Generali holds a leadership position in terms of sustainability performance as it ranks among the global top five companies in the insurance sector.
Established in 1831, the company now has locations in 50 countries and employs more than 72,000 people who serve 65.9 million customers (as of December 31, 2020). Their presence in Greece dates from 1886, and today, Generali Hellas is the 6th largest insurance company in the country with central offices in Athens. Generali Hellas offers comprehensive solutions in all insurance sectors: life, home, car, boat, small business insurance, as well as corporate insurance and more.
With the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020, the company was in a strong position to ensure business continuity and minimize disruption. Generali Hellas had already digitized many of their operational processes in response to changes in Greek Law that took place just a few months earlier.
Changes in Greek Law Impact the Customer Experience
On August 29th, 2019, 15 months after GDPR was put into law, the long-awaited Greek Law regarding the protection of personal data was published in the Government Gazette (137/A/29-08-2019). Law 4624/2019 supplements the provisions of the GDPR. As it relates to insurance services providers, the law requires that all members of an insured family over the age of 15 must sign consent documents.
This new legislation meant that customers would be obligated to go to a broker’s office to sign paperwork in-person. Not only was this inconvenient and time consuming for the customer, the additional step also meant further delays in advancing a purchase. The process now took a few additional days, or sometimes even weeks, to deliver a quote to the customer.
In response to the changes made by the Greek Parliament, Generali shifted gears and focused their business strategy on advancing digital transformation efforts. By digitizing the signing process, Generali Hellas was able to all but eliminate the additional friction created by the legislation. Instead of arranging for in-person signing, this step could be completed remotely.
In their digital transformation journey, Generali Hellas achieved a great milestone. They built the first end-to-end digital processes in Greece for life insurance customers. This set them up for success when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and they were able to accommodate the increased number of customers forced online to conduct their insurance-related activities.
How Did the Generali Hellas Insurance Company Create their Fully Digital Customer Journey?
One of the foundational elements of Generali Hellas’ digitalization strategy was leveraging OneSpan Sign electronic signatures to fulfill two use cases:
- The customer consent forms that are part of the life insurance process
- Contracts and agreements with independent brokers
Flexible e-signature workflow options were necessary to ensure an optimal signer experience across all channels and encourage higher adoption by employees, reps, and customers. In addition, ensuring compliance was absolutely critical.
Did you know?
There are generally three forms of electronic signatures recognized around the world: Basic, Advanced, and Qualified.
For more information, our ebook Electronic Signature and the Law: Global Legislation Review has a detailed list of countries that have enacted e-signature legislation, segmented by the e-signature types they allow.
Use Case: Customer Consent Forms
To speed up the insurance quote process, Generali integrated OneSpan Sign into their OneView application for brokers. It was a quick integration, only requiring a few weeks.
“This was one of the reasons we chose OneSpan Sign,” explains Antonis Apergis, Software Development Assistant at Generali Hellas. “Our primary selection criteria was to be able to seamlessly embed e-signature into our existing applications. OneSpan Sign provided a simple, yet rich API that allowed us to quickly integrate into OneView.”
The digital quote process proved to be expedient, reduced admin work, and straightforward to use for customers and brokers. Further, after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdowns or deterred people from visiting in-person branches, Generali was well positioned to transition to a fully digital brokerage team. The OneSpan Sign electronic signature solution allowed customers to sign in real-time and service to continue without interruption.
Use Case: Contracts and Agreements with Independent Brokers
OneSpan Sign played a big part in ensuring compliance. The Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) regulates the sale of insurance in the European Union and mandates that brokers provide a standard level of transparency when working with customers.
Compliance involves signing numerous documents, including an annual contract agreement between each broker and the insurance company. E-Signature technology made it easy for Generali Hellas to gather thousands of signatures from their brokers in a fraction of the time compared to the old way of pen and paper. This process was able to be automated by using the standalone OneSpan Sign web service.
Generali Hellas Positions Themselves as an Industry Leader throughout the Pandemic
In a chaotic business environment where insurance providers saw a serious decrease in productivity, Generali Hellas’ performance went in the opposite direction. They experienced growth and positive customer feedback as a result of the implemented digital solutions and operational model. The strategy contributed to Generali Hellas strengthening their market position with an +8% increase in production compared to 2019 and continued to steadily grow their market share at 6%.
To learn more about how Generali Hellas was able to implement OneSpan Sign and advance their digital transformation strategy, read the full case study
Case Study
Ensure business continuity by building end-to-end digital processes
Read this case study to learn how Generali leveraged OneSpan Sign to reduce processing time to less than 24 hours, all while ensuring compliance and a top notch user experience.
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