Building an innovation mindset

Since its launch in 2018, the Zurich Innovation Championship (ZIC) has established itself as a leading innovation program in the insurance industry. During this time, it has attracted more than 10,000 submissions from startups which offer ingenious products and services.

Thanks to ZIC, there are currently 50 ongoing startup collaborations that are helping to bring new products and services to market, working in cooperation with local business units. But the Championship has done more than just inject some startup flair into Zurich – it has helped change the mindset.

"Innovation isn't just about using AI or finding new tech," says Group Chief Information and Digital Officer Ericson Chan, Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich). "By working with top startups, focusing on the real business needs and challenges, and adding AI and tech into the mix, we can speed things up and unlock new possibilities and value."

The Championship has also helped create the conditions – from the provision of resources to the input of senior managers – to ensure great ideas turn into reality.

“While an innovation culture will not necessarily lead to innovation, it is certainly a precondition,” says Paolo Mantero, Zurich’s Group Chief Strategy Officer. “The Zurich Innovation Championship has been set up in such a way to create space for innovation, develop initiatives and implement them.”

Here’s how three previous winners are transforming the way we operate and helping a culture of innovation to thrive:

LISA Insurtech: accelerating claims payments

In the world of insurance, the speed with which claims are settled is often considered the most important factor driving customer satisfaction. It’s why Zurich Chile chose to work with 2023 ZIC winner LISA Insurtech, a startup, founded in Chile, that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate insurance claims.

Zurich Chile processes about 350,000 health insurance claims a month. About 65 percent of the claims are automatically settled at the point of sale. The remaining 35 percent are reimbursed in the traditional way: Customers pay providers and then send bills and documents to get reimbursed.

By the end of August 2024, thanks to its collaboration with LISA, Zurich Chile was using AI to process 33 percent of these traditional health claims automatically. That’s about 33,000 cases a month. The goal is to reach 70 percent. The key benefit of the new AI-powered process is speed.

“Our health claims typically took about four and a half days to settle,” says Nelcia Do Carmo Oliveira, Chief Claims Officer, Zurich Latin America. “They can now be settled within a day.”

Other business units within Zurich are considering LISA’s technology to read and settle different types of claims.

Wysa: using AI to support mental health

In the U.S., it is estimated that lost productivity due to mental health-related absenteeism costs businesses USD 47.6 billion a year. It’s a growing problem, and it’s one where Zurich’s corporate customers need support.

“Customers were asking for a service around mental health,” explains Lisa Dutkanych, Head of Strategy, Business Planning & Marketing, Zurich Resilience Solutions, Zurich North America. “Mental health is a particular challenge because people suffer in silence. We need to convince our customers that this is a business risk and provide the resources that their employees might not otherwise be getting or utilizing.”

ZRS soon recognized that Wysa, a company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., had a solution. Wysa has created an AI chatbot for mental health support. It is designed to help people who are experiencing low mood, stress or anxiety, providing tools and techniques to build emotional resilience and enable employees to improve their mental health before symptoms become severe. The AI encourages users to take additional support, whenever it’s needed, by guiding them towards Wysa’s human coaching, employer benefits programs or national crisis lines.

“Wysa really fits a gap we didn’t have,” says Dutkanych. “We were able to wrap Wysa’s AI technology – a chatbot and proactive prevention – around our consulting services and provide a holistic offering for our customers as relates to mental health.”

In the U.S., ZRS will initially work with Wysa in the construction industry, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the country at 45.3 deaths per 100,000 people about twice the overall suicide rate for men. ZRS will then look at other industries and consider rolling out Wysa’s solution to Canada and other countries.

Meanwhile, a second Zurich North America use case is now underway. In July 2024, Life, Accident & Health (LA&H) added Wysa’s mental health resource to its Group Student Travel offering for students and staff studying abroad.

“We participated in some travel conferences and kept hearing that the biggest concern of risk managers was the mental health of their students studying abroad,” said Regional Underwriting Manager for Group Accident Mike Hughes. “Often it's their first time away from home and they’re in a foreign country. Those risk managers were looking for more resources, and we saw this as a perfect fit.”

Miss Moneypenny Technologies: policy in a pocket

When customers submit an insurance claim, they obviously hope that the process will be as simple and seamless as possible.

That’s why Zurich Germany chose to work with another of the 2023 Championship winners, Miss Moneypenny Technologies, an Insurtech, based in Berlin, Germany, which has developed the Wallet Studio that leverages the benefits of Apple’s and Google’s digital wallet apps.

Customers have all their policy details in one place, available at a glance.

“If an accident occurs, they can contact us directly at any time,” says Clara von Gagern, who heads the Strategic Claims Management team in Zurich Germany. “They have all the information right there in their pocket, on their mobile phone, and within their digital wallet app that they already know, use and trust.”

An additional feature on Miss Moneypenny’s Wallet Studio is a QR code which can be scanned by a third party who is affected by an accident with a Zurich customer.

“In a world before the wallet, we just waited for the third party to contact us and we didn’t know when that would happen,” says von Gagern. “Once the QR code is scanned, we know that there was an accident and we can send push notifications both to our policyholder as well as the third party to make contact right away.”

The digital claims journey starts with the onboarding of a new customer right through to the payment of a claim. For Zurich Germany, the collaboration with Miss Moneypenny strengthens the links in that chain.

To ensure that Business Units (BUs) around the world can adopt this solution effortlessly, Zurich has created a global product, offering scalability and ease of implementation.

After successful testing with high customer engagement, BU Switzerland is set to deploy it for a broader customer segment during 2025. Meanwhile, Cover-More, the Group’s global travel insurance and assistance provider, will initiate the first rollout in travel insurance. Zurich Integrated Benefits plans to deploy this technology to its international customers. In addition, Zurich Argentina, Zurich’s joint venture with Spanish banking group Banco Sabadell, and IPZ, the international programs unit, also aim to test it.

Seven BUs in total are already in line to use this solution and many more are expected to follow. Miss Moneypenny Technologies and Zurich are not just improving processes, they are transforming the insurance experience, making it more efficient, responsive and customer-centric.