“Guaranteed” success: Building insurance, safely

Jakob Thyme, Chief Operating Officer of Lloyd's Brussels, believes that technologies such as digitization of the analog processes holds a high degree of importance.

Digitization can enable better and more meaningful interactions with customers to better understand their needs, while making the business more cost effective, and gather much more structured data, he says.

According to Thyme acceptance of the importance of data is essential to improve client experience as well as the economic results of the portfolio.

Jakob Thyme had taken up a big, and unique responsibility. That of building a 330-year old insurance company's EMEA operations, from scratch. "Basically a complete new green-field setup," The Chief Operating Officer of Lloyd's Brussels tells Mohit Joshi, President, Infosys, on the sidelines of Infosys’ EMEA Confluence. After having dedicated 18 months in designing, and defining a business model, going into the operating model, working with all the syndicates, and bringing together multiple systems to set up the new entity, Thyme is raring to move forward. He believes, "I think we’re at the beginning of the beginning.", and according to him, the journey of transformation has started for the insurance firm.

Lloyd’s began its operations in a coffee shop in the year 1688, and is today working its way into the digital ecosystem. Thyme believes that technologies such as digitization of the analog processes holds a high degree of importance. It is something that can enable better and more meaningful interactions with customers to better understand their needs, while digitally enabling the processes, and as a result make the business more cost effective, and gather much more structured data.

This accelerated process of transformation cannot move forward without building a workforce that constantly learns and adapts in an environment where automation and data are the way forward. "And that’s the new way, not just about what you accumulate of knowledge, but how you learn. I think that's the challenge to all of us," says Thyme. What is also essential, according to him, is an acceptance of the importance of data. "Now we creating a whole data lake of structured data," he says, adding that its essential to utilize the data to improve client experience as well as the economic results of the portfolio.