121Advisor: Sparking a Wave of Transformation With InsurTech & FinTech Solutions
When speaking of the finance sector, we cannot help but acknowledge the unprecedented advancements in FinTech & InsurTech. The niche has been subject to a series of metamorphic upgrades that’ve completely changed the way we view finances.
Be it the avant-garde technology or impeccable portfolio management, umpteen aspects of these changes are conspicuously advantageous for corporations. To propagate the same, a few companies, above all, have pioneered strong initiatives in this niche. These initiatives have caused a palpable market impact; one that has benefited customers at multiple levels as well as raised the overall standards of the industry.
In the Asia Pacific region specifically, the company that showed the most promise on this front was 121Advisor. Based out of Malaysia, 121Advisor provides FinTech & InsurTech solutions to the Banking, Insurance & Takaful sectors.
One Two One Advisor was co-founded back in 2010 by Kevin Steer, a renowned international entrepreneur. Since its inception, the company has ardently beared the motto: “We Don’t Follow Trends, We Make Them.”
The company’s trendsetting feats have justifiably garnered it a place in our list of “30 Most Trusted Brands to Watch 2021”.
121Advisor: The Expertise That Drives The Brand
Like any successful brand, probably the most noteworthy aspect of 121Advisor is the entrepreneurial mettle of its founder. Being the driving force of the company, Kevin Steer has tactfully ‘steered’ 121Advisor to achieve ever-greater milestones, all thanks to his varied professional & educational experience.
Kevin graduated from Cambridge University (UK) in 1978, and holds a Bachelor of Arts Engineering degree and a Master of Arts (Electrical Sciences) degree from the same university. He also holds a Master of Science (Computing) degree from Imperial College, London.
In addition to his technical education, Kevin also boasts of significant work experience in the field. He started his career for Schlumberger Asia in 1979 as a Field Engineer and Manager. He was posted to China to run its USD 12 million annual operations in Liaohe. In 1985, he left the company to pursue his Masters in Computing at Imperial College. Later, in 1988, Kevin joined Artificial Intelligence Ltd, UK as a Research Engineer working on massively parallel AI Applications. He then played a major role as a Consultant with Strand Software Inc, US, Oregon Advanced Computing Institute and was appointed as a consultant to Boeing Aerospace Inc, US (1989 – 1990).
Fulfilling Needs Through Holistic Services
Working in various tech-based roles over the years, Kevin has acquired immense industrial acumen and an intuitive understanding of customers’ needs. This is remarkably evident in his company’s holistic services, which encompass all procedural needs of customers:
Predictive Analytics with Machine Learning: Used for predicting new products to buy, churns & lapsation, underwriting, etc.
Multi-lingual Chatbot for Financial, Insurance & Takaful (FITbot): Multi-lingual Robo Advisor and a chatbot utilize hybrid trees and natural language processing (NLP) to engage with customers to offer a more personalized customer experience and generate more referrals.
Web Portal Solution for Sales & Servicing (WebPoS): Multi-lingual mobile responsive website and portal solutions enable clients to experience a unified, personalized digital experience where content, sales, marketing, and work management are consolidated instead of siloed.
Referral Management & Marketing Automation (ReMMA): Used for banks to effectively and efficiently auto-assign leads, track, and manages lead referrals and conversions based on user-defined workflows. Marketing automation results in personalized content delivery targeted campaigns, and engagement.
Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA): Allows agents to effectively plan and manage sales activity to ensure all leads and prospects are addressed. Managers can monitor real-time to render assistance where necessary.
Choices Online Sales (COS): Allows customers to purchase sales online. The Choices Online Store (COS) allows insurer and takaful operators to leverage a mix of technological innovations from the Enterprise Digital Framework. The Choices Online Store allows carriers to configure their online products through the Enterprise Product Configurator (EPC) and offer directly to consumers via WebPortal Solution (WebPoS).
Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA): Allows agents to effectively plan and manage sales activity to ensure all leads and prospe
Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA)cts are addressed. Managers can monitor real-time to render assistance where necessary.
Mobile Sales Platform for Insurance & Takaful: Entails a Mobile Sales Platform for Insurance & Takaful, where Windows, IOS & Android are implemented. All of this is fully Regulatory Compliant.
Community & E-worksite Marketing & Distribution (CeMD): Community portal solution allows organizations to engage with community members to nurture trust and create advocates, thereby Improving customer retention.
Enterprise Product Configurator (EPC): Reduces the time to market for insurance and takaful products. Built to rapidly set up product rates, illustrations, validation engine, and an automated testing module allows quick product deployment.
Multi-channel Distribution Management Solution (McDMS): For general agencies, IFAs, brokers, Agency Leades Corporations ALCs to simplify operations by consolidating their diverse requirements. Features a built-in performance management and compensation computation, which improves clients’ sales and reduces administration costs.
Takaful & Insurance Mobility Made Simple (TIMMS): This is a mobile straight-through solution designed specifically to cater for the need of mobility on Point-of-Sales for Insurance, Takaful and Financial services. Designed to support cross-platform such as iOS, Android and Windows, TIMMS covers both offline/online sales mode which enable sales team to manage their leads, track their sales activities, create quotation, generate sales illustration, perform smart underwriting, etc.
Customer Self Service Portal (CSSP): This is an on-demand access point enabling customers to view their insurance/takaful account, anywhere and anytime. The portal provides a safe avenue for customers to update their personal information, pay premium, switch funds, print documents, update beneficiary details, request policy changes and engage in filing claims and processing, which traditionally would take weeks to be executed due to siloed lines of business.
121Advisor integrates all of the above solutions into its comprehensive product called ‘Customer First Connected Enterprise Digital Framework’.
The company’s services are further distinguished by their strong brand credo, which consists of some integral core values.
The Core Values That Drive The Company
Kevin ensures that his company adheres to stringent value system, the pillars of which are:
Innovation: The company encourages state-of-the-art thinking and encourages growth at every stage of their operations, at every facet as well.
Integrity: The team practices integrity in everyday activities, from the most mundane routine tasks to huge business decisions.
Teamwork: The company encourages cooperation and collaboration to boost productivity.
Quality: Utmost effort is made to ensure the best possible service quality to customers.
Out of all the core values, the one that’s perhaps most conspicuous is the emphasis in innovations. The company is widely known for its avant-garde concepts, more specifically its disruptive platforms.
121Advisor’s Disruptive New Platform
According to Kevin, most millennials in the Asia-Pacific region aren’t well-versed with financial planning and often max out their credit cards, eventually getting into debt. They thus need to be educated on their lifestyle, financial goals, and recommended products that they can buy online.
With the launch of www.u12know.com, 121Advisor endeavours to build a disruptive knowledge portal offering advice on lifestyle, financial & (in future) health goals. This will help them understand their needs and create a plan to help them create lifestyle & business financial plans. For each country, this will be translated into the local language. The company has created Health Calculators, and plans to introduce a “Total Health Score” which will assess whether an individual is healthy, sick, or unhealthy.
In its 10-year-long existence, the company’s ingenious solutions have been widely recognized by many eminent brands in the market. They’ve helped it carve a unique space for itself in the market.
The Company’s Eminent Customers
121Advisor’s clientèle boasts of some very Illustrious companies. The most noteworthy ones are given below:
- AmMetlife Takaful.
- AmMetlife Conventional.
- MCIS (part of Sanlam Group).
To serve more such customers, company is continually striving to increase its reach by bolstering its presence across global markets. It thus has some ambitious expansion plans in the pipeline.
Envisioning a Global Impact
At present, we have grown to 20+ companies in Malaysia, and plans to further expand its operations in Asia in Singapore and Indonesia. On the global level, it plans to expand in the European and USA market as well.
The company is constantly inventing disruptive platforms and its latest innovation, we have grown u12know to 4,000 users. It’ll soon initiate the launch of u12know in the Singapore & Indonesian market.
Some Powerful Tech Insights
Being the founder of a globally recognised company, Kevin imbibes the ideas of some global leaders in his business strategy. On an end note, he shares some insightful quotes from world-famous techies:
“A well-executed user experience builds trust. “ – Tom Creighton, Wealthsimple.
“Millenials are the least insured generation since WWII…. insurance companies are ripe for disruption.” – Mark Dowds, Trov.
“True AI needs quantum computing to support (it), but Augmented Intelligence is transforming industries today. “ – Pavel Adbur Rahmam, IBM.
Kevin furthermore goes on to say that all budding entrepreneurs, irrespective of tech or non-tech, should assess the risks and look at the potential to expand. Continual data-driven growth is the way to go for businesses of the digital age.
https://www.121advisor.com/
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