34 Asia Insurance Review May 2019

Insurance – General

Fourteen markets:

All different

Singapore-headquartered Sompo
Holdings (Asia) was establishedin 2008 and its business nowemploys 4,000 people across theregion, featuring in the list of the
top 10 largest non-life insurancecompanies in Indonesia, Malaysiaand Singapore. The firm’s newly
appointed CEO Daniel Neo spoke
to Asia Insurance Review about
the growth strategy of the insurer,
strategic relationships andtechnology.
By Paul McNamaraAt the start of April, Sompo
Holdings Asia (SOMPO),
headquartered in Singapore,
announced the appointment of Mr
Daniel Neo as its regional chief executive officer. SOMPO is responsible
for the management of the group’s
insurance business in the Asia Pacificregion excluding Japan.
An industry veteran of some 22years, Mr Neo hopes to apply his
extensive insurance and leadershipexperience in the region to drive
business growth in Asia. But he isadamant that there is no one-sizefits-all strategy for Sompo in theregion.
“From the start of April we arealso dealing with the East Asia
markets – Hong Kong, China, Taiwanand Korea,” Mr Neo said. “So I thinkthat the first step is to understandthose markets and integrate thembecause previously this office did notlook after them.”

Horses for courses
The move marks a consolidation ofmarkets in an attempt to leverage
the SOMPO brand across various
territories and replicate its success in
its home market of Japan, where thebrand is ubiquitous.

InsuranceGeneral-Interview-Sompo-DanielNeo.indd 34“We are now responsible for 14
markets altogether so I can’t say
there’s one big strategy,” said MrNeo. “We have different aspirations
because every market is different.
How you do business in Philippines
is totally different from how you do
business in Myanmar or Vietnam orThailand.”The common theme behind thedevelopment push is seeking growth
in retail customers. “Our core
aspiration is to build a strong retailplatform throughout Asia,” said Mr
Neo. “Five years ago, we came to thisregion and we were principally acorporate insurer, mainly servicing
Japanese corporates.”“Over the last five years, although
we have more than doubled ourpremium in the region, we still thinkthat we can improve how we deal
with direct customers; people buying
auto insurance, travel insurance,home insurance. In other words, theretail market,” he said.

Commercial business still
important
Mr Neo is not turning his back on
the commercial insurance sector. “It’snot that the commercial side is notinteresting for us,” he said. “We are

23/4/2019 9:33:48 AM

May 2019 Asia Insurance Review

35

Insurance – Generalvery interested – and we continue tofocus on growing that area. It’s justthat we expect more growth to comefrom retail. We are very interested inboth segments. It doesn’t mean that
we take focus away. It just meansthat we think that more effort isneeded.”
On a global level, Sompo Grouphas many decades of experience,
thanks largely to its presence inJapan. “In Japan we are number one
on the retail side, especially with ourhome insurance and auto insurance
and the likes,” said Mr Neo. “Butoutside of Japan, especially in Asia,
we have still got a long way to go
to become very strong on the retailside.”
And this will be a step-by-stepprocess. “One of the core things that
we want to do, as a regional office, isto build strong teams throughout theregion and it starts with the CEO,”said Mr Neo. “CEOs are basicallyleaders as well as managers - you
don’t expect them to sell policies. We
believe that if you look at the second
and third layers, we are working
hard at creating strong teams.”

The importance of culture
This is the same approach that
Sompo will take to the new markets
like China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“We want to have a performance
culture throughout the wholeAsia region, a culture of solving
problems,” Mr Neo said. “I believethat a lot of what we do is solving
problems for customers, solving
problems for intermediaries. People
tend to think that selling insurance
is about just collecting premiums,
but if you can’t solve problems forpeople, why should they give youmoney? Culture is very important– performance culture, fairness

InsuranceGeneral-Interview-Sompo-DanielNeo.indd 35

culture, competitivenessculture.”Understanding the domestic
features of each market will also be
important to future growth and Mr
Neo recognises the unique facetsof each market. “The nuance of thePhilippines market is so different,” hesaid. “It’s mostly commercial. They
don’t do much retail. But in Malaysia,
50% of the portfolio is motor. So wecannot apply the same strategy tothem. We really want them to havethe best people. And the best people
in the markets have to come up withthe best strategy.”
What are some of the otherindividual domestic characteristics ofthe various markets in Asia? “Vietnam is not really a retail market forus at this point,” said Mr Neo. “Wewant to focus on corporate businessthere. In some markets we may beinterested in being more digital
because we feel that it’s very hard
to follow the traditional network
for building a retail platform. So wemay be doing more digital in certainmarkets.”
But in spite of the different
variations, there are still someoverarching themes that will guidethe future growth story. “Overall wehave aspirations to be very strong intravel insurance,” said Mr Neo. “We
believe that if you really want to be astrong retail player where motor is a
big part of the market, then you needto have a reasonable market sharein three to five years. As you canimagine, not all markets are motor
markets. Thailand is really a motor
market. So we need to be strong inmotor in Thailand.”

Leveraging technology
How does any market-leading
insurance firm adapt to the changing

ways that customers buy insurance?
“In Japan, I would say we’re quite
high-tech,” Mr Neo said. “We have
many different technology tools,wearable solutions, sensors in thecar. We have a digital lab in Silicon
Valley that is trying to identify thelatest technology and whether it’s
relevant to insurance. We have a
digital lab in Israel. And we havea small digital team in our officein Singapore that is trying to solve
problems. Those are the resourcesthat are available to us.”But there’s a caveat. “We shouldn’t
think about technology first,” said
Mr Neo. “We should think about ourcustomers first. What do we want to
do with the customer? What is ourcustomer strategy? If we start withdigital without our customer strategy– that is not going to work.”

Focus on the customer
Mr Neo views the growth of thebusiness as a very structured process.
“More important to us right now iscustomer acquisition,” he said. “Wewant to have millions and millions ofcustomers. At the end of the day, yes
we want to use digital tools. Not forcapturing premiums but to help theselling process.”“Unless you have a very strong
affinity partner, like an airline, thefront-end digital tool is really notcapturing a lot of customers directly.
We want to be sustainable in the longterm. We want customers to say, I’maware of the brand SOMPO. I want a
particular product and I know whereto get it easily.”

23/4/2019 9:29:19 AM