CEO Shin Chang-jae of Kyobo Life and concurrently chairman of the board of directors demanded the company pursue innovation and digital transformation, stressing a crisis facing the insurance industry at a ceremony to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Kyobo’s founding at Kyobo Life Insurance headquarters in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on Aug. 7.
Chairman Shin warned of “gray rhinos,” saying, “Great changes of the insurance industry, such as the aging, the implementation of the International Financial Accounting Standards 17 (IFRS17) and the rollout of the Korean-Insurance Capital Standards (K-ICS), big tech companies’ entry into the insurance market and structural changes of insurance channels take place in the whole of the insurance industry.”
Gray rhinos is a reference to obvious risks that are neglected because of their size.
“Clues to innovation can be found from inconveniences customers experience, and customer experiences hovering over online and offline using digital technology and data need to be designed,” Chairman Shins said.
Chairman Shin stressed the importance of a successful digital transformation.
Experts expect the Korean insurance industry to reinvent business models in the next few years and succeed in the development of new businesses, and Kyobo should devote itself to pursuing digital transformation and entering new businesses, he said.
“In order to find best innovation opportunities, we have to receive help regardless of the inside and outside, and we should pursue open innovation more actively than now to swiftly solve insurance business problems through collaboration with outside partners,” he said.
Kyobo Life has implemented open innovation through strategies using corporate venture capital, acceleration for nurturing startups, and an in-house venture system.
Chairman Shin said if innovation takes place actively, a flexible corporate culture needs to be built.
If innovation takes place actively, he said a horizontal and flexible organizational culture needs to be settled.
Kyobo’s goal toward corporate culture is to help employees express their views freely, execute their duties with a sense of responsibility based on duties and capabilities and max out its business performance by recognizing their and clarify their compensations, he said.
To this end, he said, Kyobo decided to use English names instead of ‘his’ or ‘her’ titles, improve the way work is done, put into practice diversity, equality and inclusiveness (DE&I) and introduce a system in which employees are deployed to positions they want to work.
Chairman Shin said Kyobo has to raise the competitiveness of marketing activities targeting MZ generations, future major consumption clienteles, and the company makes efforts to offer diverse experiences to MZ generations so they can sympathize with the necessity of insurance.
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