Damien Green, president and CEO of Manulife Asia, wants the insurer to become the digital customer leader in its industry in Asia. To help achieve this ambition, the company has brought in 20-year industry veteran, Harshal Shah as its new chief marketing and experience design officer for Asia.
FutureCIO spoke to Shah to understand how the role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) is evolving in the region, Manulife’s approach towards achieving its ambitions, and how he sees the roles of CMO and experience design officer blend together at Manulife Asia.
What do you see are the challenges that CMOs in Asia face in the performance of their role?
Harshal Shah: The biggest challenge for insurance CMOs in Asia is organizing ourselves to address the huge potential demand for our propositions.
The pandemic has enhanced awareness of health and mortality, and this has, in turn, created additional demand for protection. That is compounding the huge underinsured population in Asia, particularly in the emerging markets, coupled with a growing retirement gap and the need to provide better health protection to our communities. All of these create significant opportunities for growth.
"The time I have spent in different Asian markets across banking and insurance gives me the advantage of a grounded understanding of what is possible and how to leverage some of the learnings that banks have had, to drive value for the benefit of potential insurance customers."
Banks have more frequent direct engagement with customers to help them complete their daily transactions. However, for insurance companies, customers often buy a policy and don’t engage with the insurer after that, and when they do it’s often due to either a claim or a premium payment – neither of which is usually an uplifting experience.
So, if we are to meet the latent insurance needs of our potential customers and bridge the large protection gap across Asia, we need to have more frequent engagement with them and create positive experiences in our propositions.
Banks have learnt it the hard way after the global financial crisis and are very good at using technology and new marketing techniques to create great experiences, as well as taking responsibility for building deeper relationships with their customers. There is a huge opportunity for us to do the same in insurance.
From your observation, how has the role of the CMO evolved over the years (in the context of Asia)?
Harshal Shah: Customers’ engagement with smart devices, new media, and e-commerce platforms has had a transformative effect on the role of the CMO. We need to be increasingly responsible for creating the end-to-end customer experience, extending our reach beyond the traditional marketing role.
“We are approaching digital transformation and partnerships with the lens of creating an ecosystem, and so our strategy is to become a proactive, positive partner, improving our customers’ lives every day.”
Harshal Shah
The only way we can do this is by rethinking our role as a modern financial institution and looking at the way we do business through our customers’ eyes, and so a big part of our transformation is about incorporating and applying human-centred design principles and leveraging data to personalize our content and propositions to varied customer segments based on their preferences.
That means maximizing trust and empathy among our customers, as well as distributors, and enhancing those human relationships with efficient digital solutions.
The Asian CMO of today needs to be more commercial than ever before. They need to be able to find the consumers’ needs and make that latent need come alive with smart data-driven propositions that are targeted through the right marketing channels and platforms, connecting the distribution channels seamlessly with the least friction process, creating value for both the customer and the insurer.
How do you see the two roles, CMO and Experience Design Officer, complementing each other?
Harshal Shah: The mandate for the CMO and Experience Design Officer role is extremely broad, but with that breadth comes plenty of opportunity. In general, my team is responsible for creating interest and demand in our products and services and then converting that demand and introducing new Manulife customers.
Once people become customers, we are focused on creating exceptional, differentiated experiences throughout the lifespan of their policy.
We leverage human-centred design to re-imagine priority moments that influence customer advocacy and drive business results. We also harness the power of advanced analytics to predict servicing intents, aligning customers with personalized solutions when the next need arises.
The two roles work hand in hand to identify and redesign priority experiences across the customer journey, from boosting brand consideration to driving purchase decisions, to creating advocacy and brand loyalty, for prospects and existing customers alike.
Please describe the company’s expectations of your role at Manulife.
Harshal Shah: Our goal is to become the digital customer leader in our industry – so the expectation is simple and awesome!
Insurance has lagged behind other sectors in terms of digitization and customer experience, so I think our mission provides my team with a massive opportunity. It’s very exciting.
In your view, what needs to be available to be effective in your role?
Harshal Shah: Fundamental to all of this is the availability of data – without having great data and the means to analyse it, we can’t deliver targeted communications, generate leads, or drive sales through our agent network.
Data allows us to understand our customers’ needs and to put them at the centre of how we engage with them. It’s not about selling the products that we can create; it’s about selling the propositions that customers really want, at the time they need it, through the channel through which they are engaging.
Which technologies are most important in the performance of the CMO role?
Harshal Shah: Artificial Intelligence has embedded itself at the core of what we do. AI enables us to deliver personalized messages to customers at the right time in their journey, and faster analytics-driven systems and approaches enable smoother experiences in areas such as claims handling.
What do you see will be critical in the performance of your role moving ahead?
Harshal Shah: It is critical to prioritise and sequence our investments to achieve maximum benefit. That’s why we will strategically:
- Leverage the voice of the customer to ensure we solve the most pressing customer issues.
- Create differentiated customer experiences by doubling down on the most critical interactions that will have the most impact for our brand.
- Extend our relationships in our Health and Wellness ecosystem to serve customers in new ways.
- Personalise our offerings to serve the vast diversity of Asian customers with protection when they need it and how they need it.
