CEO of Aegon International, Executive Committee member, Aegon Ltd.
Aegon Ceo Marco Keim over noodzaak to innovatie. Knab, Kroodle &EyeOpen
Aegon heeft een balans van €300Mld wereldwijd en 80mld in NL. Echt een traditioneel groot financiele marktleider, vooral pensioenen. Hoe innoveert hij zijn bedrijf. Wat wil hij met de startups? Wat drijft hem en welke kant gaat het uit? In 13m probeer ik dat uit te vinden.
Transcript (9 segments)
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Interviewer0:08
In the Tesla today with Mark, okay? Okay Mark, mission of Aegon Bank and insurance. Aegon Bank is large in pensions, insurance, and also a bank with mortgages. And Marco is a true innovator – Aegon embraces innovations. I really want to find out why and where that inspiration comes from. Mark, we all know Aegon. You have roughly, you also have the crowdfunding, Facebook insurance where my home contents insurance is, and you have open... those are external parties you founded under the label to innovate all aspects of your insurance business. How do you see innovation within such a large financial insurer? How many people work there? What are your revenues? Briefly: about 1 billion more in education in the Netherlands, about 80 billion, and we have 25,000 people worldwide. Yes, you are from the Dutch part of health insurance and banks. Yes okay, how should that be in the coming period? Where have you learned and where do we need to innovate?
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Marco Keim1:29
There are two choices when you look at the fascinating changes in technology possibilities – look at this self-driving car, technology and data. You can either be very afraid and try to hold on to what you have, or embrace it and use it to adapt your services to today's demands.
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Interviewer1:50
Okay, and what are those demands? Because the financial sector – everyone finds it terrible, actually we would rather have nothing to do with it. There are two sides to the opportunity. People are not really interested. On one side you see the government withdrawing, employers withdrawing in pension areas. That becomes increasingly relevant. What we do becomes only more important if we can bring it to customers in the right way. Things that are not interesting for customers, you need to bring at the right moment, make it easy, encourage self-service. If you want to be sustainable, learn to clean up cleanly. Technology today offers many possibilities. So at the right moment about financial matters – I think of marriage, children, houses – life stages. There are moments when you are thirty, in a location, in the birth shop, then you could see that you might have a child, and it might be relevant to send information about what that means in your life. We should set up again as a product supplier. Our products could be others' products too, with an open architecture. We can even let people steer their own financial future. That's like the mortgage you have with your company, which sells other products. Yes, but it's eye-opening. Also more work on accessibility of advice as cheaply as possible by introducing self-service and automating assistants. The intermediary from Rotterdam can give advice at much lower costs. I started with mortgages and rolled out to other forms. The more the customer does themselves, the cheaper it is. Yes, but what is the rule then? Is it meant to be an insurance intermediary product, or is it something to teach me how to reorient the 80 billion balance sheet factory? How does that fit within innovation?
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Marco Keim3:53
We see it as a completely new model. In the past, on our balance sheet, my task was that 80 billion. Now we see the future much more as a kind of director, a service provider helping the customer navigate the jungle of financial products. You get all four for that. We try not to put money into selling our own products, but use our knowledge of the customer to send alerts. It's not a dream, not 3 euros per month. Banks like ABN AMRO earn at the back, but we earn at the front for service. Also report if you are in the red and offer to top up automatically. Other examples: putting their money on a one-off or on Tinder. We make customers better off instead of the bank. The business model is different. Technology is scalable. With a certain volume, we can achieve a genius model. Knap must also become a bank with much lower costs, so you can read about that 5 euros per month while at ABN AMRO it might be a third. Absolutely. And so with mortgages it is clear.
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Interviewer4:40
Yes, but is it meant to be an automated insurance intermediary piece? Or to act as an insurance intermediary briefly on MySpace with Facebook? That was the first insurer that approached me via Facebook. What's the idea behind it?
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Marco Keim5:50
The idea was how to use special communities to get customers more cheaply. Friends refer friends. The origin was that if you have a claim, you have to post it so your friends can see. If there is profit, part goes back to the customer. It was a hacking experiment. Could utilize the win-win-win. Cheaper for customers, lower claim ratio, lower acquisition costs, better customer experience. Everything digitized, so you don't need thousands of people. The data is available in the public domain. I have a car that gets data and shows your driving style, how often you cross the white line, drive too fast, and the premium becomes higher or lower before claims. It has a gamification effect. Compared to others, I see more about white lines, tips, and that has gone down. Also about fuel.
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Interviewer7:26
Something else we see in our industry is that we work in levels. We want to avoid making it too complex. But the financial plan is the first time in my life I made a plan. That's for old people who don't know Knap. People who don't know you have a financial plan, you just say these are my life stages: I will work less, have children, this is my income, then cash flow. I calculated for the first time at 65 half my income, at 70 a quarter, and the consequences. That is normal but fun. Research says you think it's too much. We bring it in layers. I had a person for an hour, nine hours exactly, a boundary with Oscar for a year, and that helped. Now I can play with it. I need dashboards, feedback, self-steering, but also motivation. The person says: I need this, that, we put it in and you can play. If you fill it correctly, you get more. If you don't fill in for daughter turning 18, that's another moment when things change. Pay attention to insurances, more data gives more interest. Buy a house for your daughter, rental income covers it. But everyone thinks that now. That kind of advice would be nice. Wouldn't you buy a house for yourself?
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Marco Keim9:44
I am the CEO of insurance and bank. My background is everything, but I would call myself a marketer. That's my biggest energy. I studied insurance. But now you are in a difficult or powerful sector in difficult times. Since the financial crisis, oil and gas has changed. I came in exactly at that time. We closed, crises come, sectors never recover. All those bonuses went down the drain. How do you view the sector's place in society and government interference? The government now determines that existing mortgage holders cannot get a higher rate than new customers. So the government interferes in every aspect. I think it's sad that there is overregulation. The market demand for something is there. You have to restore trust yourself by using models where you are a service provider, not a product supplier. Legislation says you can no longer work with margins but percentages. Advice now has to be paid for. Is that a crazy form of rules? I think rules should be consistent and predictable. The ban on commissions is good because you compete on service quality. The advisor advises the customer, not the supplier. The supplier must have his house in order. It's win-win-win. The only downside is accessibility. That's why we set up Knap to keep advice affordable. It went from free to paid, which discourages people. A bad advisor is expensive, but a good advisor pays off at the end, not upfront.
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Interviewer12:40
How do you keep busy? Now you drive over the white line without showing direction? You get a nice bonus, a nice dashboard. How is this time to work on such a big company? It's a privilege because you see a transformation period. We are in a quasi-initial revolution. Technology makes so much possible, data fundamentally changes an old-fashioned industry into a new future where people and customers can work with pleasure. You get answers. Do you want to lean? An infringement? No, not at all. You go straight to the line. Thank you, Mark, for that.