Building the LP&I workforce of the future

Is your organisation’s DNA

fit for the future?
Is your organisation’s DNA
fit for the future?
The zeitgeist of disruption in life, pensions and
investments (LP&I) is ongoing, with governments,
regulators, economists and customers continuing to
challenge and reset thinking and expectations in this
long-established industry.

Much has been written about the need for LP&I

providers to respond digitally, and many organisations
are proactively taking their first tentative steps into the
digital world. But Accenture believes that one critical
component of this journey is being overlooked – the
‘Workforce of the Future’.

Being digital on the outside means being digital on

the inside, and that has to start with the employees,
their perspectives and the operating model and culture
within which they operate. From now on, leaders
must fundamentally change their organisations from
within – creating more agile ways of working, sustaining
efficiencies and capitalising on critical talent to support
future growth.

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The LP&I workforce
of the future
The LP&I industry faces disruption from all sides.
Intensifying and unpredictable regulation is a fact
of life. Auto-enrolment and pensions reform are
re-establishing the company workplace as a key market.
New, fierce sources of competition are
proliferating – from non-core adjacent
competitors (like Hargreaves Lansdown
and Nutmeg), to online platforms and
data champions (like Amazon and Google).
And, already the norm in most other
industries, strong digital capabilities are now
essential – to meet new expectations from
consumers for propositions that cater to every
stage of their life journeys, provide a positive
working environment for their own employees
and enable a consolidated view of products.
These disruptive forces have been discussed
at length in the boardroom in the context
of providers’ processes and their technology
– particularly where digital responses are
concerned. But, as yet, few organisations
have been able to make the move to
digital with any conviction. In most cases,
their journey is being blocked by a failure
to identify and focus on one critical
enabler – the ‘Workforce of the Future’.
Disruption has profound implications
for an organisation’s DNA – not just in
terms of identifying the types of roles
that will be increasingly vital from now
on (see Figure 1), but also the operating
models and culture that will be best suited
to a marketplace in constant flux. Now is
the time for LP&I providers to make up for
lost time and invest in building a workforce
that’s fit for the future – agile, insightful
and enabled by digital: a new DNA for a
new future.
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So what does this mean for your
organisation? As a starting point, ask
yourself whether your workforce currently
thinks, acts and operates in a way that you
are confident can address some of the key
challenges facing the LP&I industry:
• How can we achieve customer relevance and
generate customer lifetime value?
• How should we write risk in a digital world?
• Do we truly understand the impact of new
distribution channels on my business?
• Do we know what our customers are saying
and thinking, are we listening, and are we
brave enough to test responses with them?
• What will tomorrow’s critical talent be and
how can we optimally attract, retain and
integrate it into today’s world?
• How do we optimise our business and
operating models to execute our legacy and
new worlds in parallel?
Organisations that shape and develop
their workforce to identify answers to
these questions will be the progressive
LP&I providers of the future. But it’s a
journey that calls for a rapid and radical
reassessment of how work is done, by whom
and where – as well as how the workforce
can be changed incrementally over time.
Figure 1: LP&I disruptors and the future workforce roles required to respond to them
Regulation
intensifying and unpredictable
Evolved regulatory consultancy
function to support the business by
aligning proposition development to
evolving/future regulatory changes
Consumer behaviour
new expectations / journeys
Dedicated ‘customer outcome
specialists’ acting as customer-focused
advocates whose role is to build
continuous natural engagement
with customers across products and
risk/actuarial processes
Competition
fierce and from surprising directions
Enhanced proposition functions
incorporating superior product
design capabilities and enhanced
CRM capabilities that will be key
to value creation
Digital
here and now
Dedicated teams to drive the digital
agenda holistically across the
organisation (e.g. through innovation
teams, social media response, digital risk
skills, beta-testing new products)
Workplace
re-emerging as a marketplace
Enhanced partnership function to build
compelling workplace propositions
enabled by customer data specialists
Aggregation
demand for a single view of all assets
Development of aggregation
functionality internally, along with
the ability to attract external
providers to use this functionality
and/or partnerships with external
aggregation providers
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Bring on the alchemists
Consumer behaviours are changing faster than ever
before. Customers are less brand loyal, more price savvy
and increasingly comfortable buying through digital
channels and/or non-traditional players.
Disruptive digital players, such as Google,
pose a potent threat. With the ability to
harness huge volumes of information (up
to 37 million data-points per consumer in
one recent programme), they have the raw
material, and the technology know-how,
to accurately predict consumers’ life
journeys. From there, it’s a small step
to targeting customised propositions at
LP&I providers’ core marketplace. There
is already speculation about Google and
Amazon launching life insurance products
in North America.1 And in the UK, we’re
seeing movement in this direction with the
recent launch of Google Compare for Car
Insurance, a price comparison website.
The stark truth is that most LP&I providers
do not have access to anything like the
same quantity of data-points on consumers.
And even if they did, they currently lack
the digital capabilities needed to drive
value from them. Research for the 2015
Accenture Technology Vision2 surveyed
over 220 insurers worldwide: 56 percent of
them said managing data is ‘extremely’ or
‘very’ challenging, considering changes in its
volume, variety and velocity.
As providers seek to leverage these
opportunities, an immediate priority must
be creating, developing and harnessing
two roles that will be increasingly
vital that will be in increasing demand:
data scientists to mine every available
consumer data-point; harness this big
data and use analytics to drive insights
from it, and ‘proposition alchemists’ who
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can take these insights and combine them
with their in-depth business knowledge
to differentiate propositions, and make
them relevant to individual customers.
We’re seeing these roles emerge, but
their skills, heritage and placement in the
organisational hierarchy vary significantly.
Accordingly, many are left disenfranchised
and disillusioned, reduced simply to
processing poor data for management
information (MI) rather than applying
analytics to rich blends of internal and
external data for product or customer
strategy.
We believe these ‘proposition alchemists’
will be critical to the future of
LP&I – enabling providers to offer more
compelling, outcome-focused and
personalised propositions. Alchemy, like
insurance, has deep traditional roots that
must not be forgotten when designing the
future. Individuals and teams that can mix
the right components in an organisation and
bring them to the right customers at the
right points in their journey, will succeed.
These skills, their place in the organisation
and the associated governance and
operating models, are a long way from
the models of today. But they are key to
the future. Much like Jung and Dhoni3,
today’s alchemists must learn to blend
myth (history), magic (innovation), religion
(existing customers) and spirituality
(capability and culture) and present them to
the market and customers through the right
channels and media.
The intersection of humans
and machines
Successful LP&I providers will recognise the benefits
of human talent and intelligent technology working
together – and they will embrace them both as critical
members of the reimagined workforce.
Robotics process automation (RPA) is
fundamentally changing the way all
organisations operate. And with recent
research4 predicting that 35 percent of UK
jobs will be automated in the next 10-20
years, LP&I providers need to move fast to
understand how increasing automation will
transform the required skill and job mixes
in core areas of the business – from claims
management and underwriting support to
policy processing and credit control. It will
also deliver potentially huge cost savings.
By creating, in effect, an automated virtual
workforce that is not only far more accurate
and efficient, but also works 24/7, we know
that RPA can result in processing costs
being cut by up to 80 percent in as little as
three months.
Employees will increasingly be expected
to develop working relationships with
intelligent machines, and we’ll see these
technologies dissolving the boundaries
between today’s back-office and tomorrow’s
front-office. Automated workflow and
administration will drive higher job
satisfaction through the eradication of
monotonous tasks, freeing up individuals to
augment capabilities elsewhere and focus
on higher-value work. In our experience,
people whose jobs are replaced by RPA have
to upskill themselves from being ‘doers’ to
becoming ‘developers’. Their jobs evolve into
developing processes that instruct robots to
follow a procedure – which in some cases is
not just a shift in skills but also a significant
leap in mindset for someone who has been
doing the same job for decades.
By providing workers with more Business and technology leaders in
democratised and customised work LP&I providers must start to view
experiences, together with interactive software intelligence not as a pilot or a
learning programmes and simpler, more one-off project, but as an across-the-
effective ways of engaging with customers, board functionality. This will demand a
automation enables more connected new acceptance by managers of what
workforces. Employees enjoy a ‘complete’ autonomy means – and how it changes
relationship with the information they the organisation’s DNA. We’ll see decision-
need to do their jobs – whether that’s making devolved to proposition alchemists
instant access, via headset, to ‘how to’ empowered by valuable data, with
videos for the field force, or transmitting automation playing a vital role in supporting
data and content back to head-office to the rapid creation and delivery of new
get a ‘crowd-sourced’ opinion on solving propositions. This will enable providers to
a problem. Remember too, automation approach work as a ‘live’ experiment, with
and democratisation make organisations fluid, iterative, discovery-oriented design
much more attractive to Millennials – of products and processes – a must-have
critical potential recruits who bring with capability in a digital world.
them vital talents and a whole new set of
expectations, but who do not currently see
LP&I as an attractive career choice.
As intelligent machines proliferate, change
will be experienced at every level of the
organisation. For example, the use of
propensity modelling will transform the
effectiveness of HR by identifying people
most likely to respond to a job offer, or
focusing retention activity on those most
likely to churn. Meanwhile, managers will
need to be willing to collapse silos and open
up to extended workforces beyond their
own walls, establishing digital platforms to
create global talent exchanges that address
skills shortages (including data scientists
and proposition alchemists).
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No more ‘business as usual’
The market disrupters we’ve identified have implications
far beyond the need for personalisation of propositions.
The central tenet of insurance is shifting, with the
fundamental concept of risk being reset through
increased access to genetic testing, safer ways of living
(e.g. driverless cars), real-time access to customer data
(via telematics) and rapid medical advances.

As a result, the way providers write risk
must change immediately. Customers
are already starting to look elsewhere,
with group-buying websites like
boughtbymany.com demonstrating the huge
potential for digital disruption in this space.
Most insurers are still tied to a business
model based on pooling risk, calculating
average pricing and generating gross
premium income. But analysts today have a
very different take on performance. They’re
seeking to break down these reporting
and operational walls to get at underlying
performance and customer-centricity. And
the pooled risk model will come under even
more pressure in the future as the Internet
of Things, big data, digital channels, and
artificial intelligence enable carriers to assess
and price risk directly and individually.
In other words, ‘business as usual’ is
becoming a thing of the past. The whole core
of the industry needs to change by insurers
adapting an experimentation mindset in
which, unlike today, failure is acceptable
so long as its lessons are captured in the
organisation’s memory and incorporated in
its DNA. This has major impacts for the LP&I
workforce. Leading providers are already
thinking about how they can meet these
new challenges by creating operating models
based on experimentation and building agile,
collaborative workforces composed of both
people and machines. Test, learn, refine and
test again: that’s the goal. But very few
providers are ready to work this way and at
speeds where actual customer impact can be
meaningfully measured.
Social forums provide further opportunities.
Providers with the capabilities needed
to tap into these communities, and to
manage their brand within them, will
better understand how to delight their
customers and continually evolve in line
with their expectations. But gaining access
to social forums and interacting with
them successfully hinges on the ability
to attract and retain the right people.
And that, inexorably, comes down to the
organisation’s DNA.

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Changing the DNA
The organisation of the future is emerging. And as
this happens, providers need to reimagine how they
are structured, and how they operate. Changes across
skills and competencies, management and leadership,
and organisational cultures all need to be addressed.
But this needs to be a subtle journey, one that allows
organisations to navigate their legacy mindset and future
worlds in a complementary fashion for several years.

So where and how to get started? We believe
five steps stand out as clear priorities:
1. Empower next-generation leaders who
want to make this happen – start small by
incubating leaders who are not afraid to fail
and learn.
2. Establish an evolving ‘two-speed’
operating model – organisational
frameworks must support agile, flexible
teams, enabled by an experimentation
mindset, to adapt continually to changing
business needs. But in the medium-term,
these new models will likely co-exist with
legacy models.
3. Lay foundations for merging front- and
back-offices – increased automation
pays dividends – both short and long
term – through increased productivity and
responsiveness. But it must be introduced in
a way that ensures man and machine work
effectively together.
4. Harness analytics at the next level –
social media listening and big data have a
vital role to play in informing personalised
proposition designs. Having invested
hugely post-RDR and to address Solvency II
requirements, now’s the time to harness
those investments, connecting them with
external sources to provide powerful
customer-centric strategic insights.
5. Manage critical talent proactively in the
context of robotics – having identified the
roles most likely to be replaced by machines,
along with the key roles and employees that
will be critical from now on, proactively
establish strategies to reshape a workforce
for the future – with data scientists and
proposition alchemists at the core.

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Do you have what it takes?

One of the world’s oldest industries is changing

faster than ever before, as new expectations from
governments, regulators, economists and customers
combine with technology innovation to transform the
LP&I landscape. From now on, providers with the vision
and commitment to shake up their DNA will position
themselves for a sustainable and profitable future. The
overriding priority? Create an environment that flexes
and provides space for people to experiment – and
shape a workforce that is agile, works successfully with
machines, and is not afraid to fail.

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References
1
http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2014/06/23/
will-google-and-amazon-offer-one-click-
life-insura?t=life-products
2
http://techtrends.accenture.com/us-en/it-
technology-trends-2015.html
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_
and_Alchemy
4
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba59685a-6821-
11e4-bcd5-00144feabdc0.
html#axzz3UeJpZxTq
Copyright © 2015 Accenture
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Authors About Accenture
William Pritchett Accenture is a global management
Managing Director, Insurance consulting, technology services and
Head of Accenture UK&I Life & Pensions outsourcing company, with approximately
william.j.pritchett@accenture.com 319,000 people serving clients in
+44 20 7844 5485 more than 120 countries. Combining
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
Sharad Mistry capabilities across all industries and
Senior Principal, Strategy business functions, and extensive research
sharad.b.mistry@accenture.com on the world’s most successful companies,
+44 77 6997 7559 Accenture collaborates with clients to
help them become high-performance
Chloe Harmer businesses and governments. The company
Industry Solutions & Services Manager generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion
chloe.harmer@accenture.com for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014.
+44 79 1904 2272 Its home page is www.accenture.com.
Mya Moe
Industry Solutions & Services Consultant
ma.mya.moe@accenture.com
+44 78 8194 3277
15-1012