Distribution strategy is fast becoming one of the hardest topics for marketers to get right.
A survey of 314 cross-sector senior marketers, published by Harvard Business Review in August 2023, found that nearly two thirds of respondents said they were using a larger number of channels in 2023 compared to a year earlier.
The same article highlights the perils of expanding channels as part of a campaign or brand strategy, such is the potential for client cannibalisation, digital connectivity issues, and buyer fatigue.
Naturally, these considerations are commonly debated in commercial teams before any business embarks on a campaign, whether tailored for a business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B) or business to business to consumer (B2B2C) audience. But especially in insurance.
Appraising approaches
Within insurance, digital distribution has long triggered divisive views, with some marketers championing the virtues of direct distribution through social and owned platforms while others remain wedded to intermediary led approaches through comparison sites and other financial intermediaries.
For the world’s largest insurers, it has become more common for a combination of distribution strategies to become the norm, and for different business divisions (or marketers within those divisions) to embrace the channels with the strongest chance of success.
And so it is with Chubb, the New York-listed insurer that boasts around 40,000 employees globally, with commercial and personal lines across property and casualty (P&C) insurance, life, protection, and reinsurance.
The group has operations in more than 55 countries and a presence in the Lloyds of London insurance market. In Asia, Chubb claims to be the largest direct marketer of insurance and one of the largest in the world through both digital and telemarketing channels. More recently, though, the business has making waves due to the success of its global partnership model for its digital business.
Profit from partnerships
The strategy – which is modelled on acquiring customers through a B2B2C approach – is increasingly setting the insurer apart, due to its ability to maintain a ubiquitous presence in its key markets, using partners to serve up products to prospective customers at important points in the decision cycle.
In its 2023 annual report, Chubb’s investor letter stated that the company was “reaching new clients and demographics through its digital distribution efforts” and noted that it is continuing its growth in Latin America, the US and Asia through these strategic partnerships.
In Latin America, Chubb is now the preferred insurance partner for Nubank – the market leading digital bank in the region. In 2023, net premiums in Latin America grew by around 15% because of partnerships like this. Similar agreements exist in the region with Banco de Chile and Citibanamex.
The head of digital business for Chubb Overseas General is Gabriel Lazaro, a marketer who has spent most of the past 14 years in commercial marketing roles in insurance. Today, he leads the digital distribution and sales effort for this international entity.
“We have seen strong demand in both Latin America and Asia, driven by factors such as economic growth, under-served lower and middle class consumers, and a pervasive use of technology,” he explains.
“Our B2B2C approach to distribution places a high priority on networking and building relationships with prospects. Today, we are partners with leading brands around the world across several sectors, including fintech, ecommerce, telcos, mobility and super-apps.”
Lazaro has been with Chubb for around 8.5 years, having worked in several roles at AIG prior to that, including as global digital marketing director. Before entering the competitive and complex world of insurance, he led the Southern Europe division of Fox Mobile, holding an executive director role.
Embedding insurance
In recent years, Lazaro has presided over a marketing strategy which has been designed to increase sales of embedded insurance through strategic partners in its key market segments.
“Our approach to partnerships is collaborative, customer-centric, and focussed on the co-creation of products with our partners,” he says. “Chubb’s value proposition for digital distribution partnerships is built on a combination of art, science and technology with a deep understanding of the customer and partner experience.”
In Singapore, the business has been working with DBS under a 15-year distribution agreement that was first signed in 2018. Since then, the partnership has enabled product innovations and inspired uses of technology which have captured the imaginations of clients and competitors alike.
Carlos Vazquez, managing director and group head, product management (Consumer Banking) at DBS Bank, recently explained how a Chubb partnership had enabled new approaches using AI. Such approaches have included the testing of new mechanisms to explain insurance contracts to consumers.
“If you’ve ever read one, they are brutal,” he told delegates at this year’s Money 20/20 Asia. “We are taking a complex legal document and turning it to something that people can understand.”
First-in-market
The DBS partnership has also generated first-in-market products such as the much-lauded dementia care insurance product for caregivers. Launched in 2023, the Dementia Caregiver Product offers protection to dementia caregivers and care recipients. In Singapore, it is estimated that one in 10 people aged 60 and over currently live with dementia.
DBS says that, given Singapore’s increasing life expectancy and rapidly ageing population, the number of people living with dementia will continue to rise still further, driving additional demand for a product that offers cover for the caregiver and/or the care recipient.
For Chubb, the success of the DBS deal not only underscores the value of long-term partnerships that go beyond purely distribution, they also justify the logic of collaborative investment and data sharing, to grow the commercial potential for both parties involved.
“With DBS, we have a 15-year agreement and we are only in our seventh year,” Lazaro explains. “We like long-term partnerships because they allow us to test, learn and grow with our partners that enable us to create better, more personalised experiences for customers.
“Through partnerships, we can provide contextual offers of insurance protection, working closely with partner companies to understand their customer buying behaviours and pain points, and how we can add value to end users.”
Multiple deals
The DBS partnership is just one of dozens of agreements that the insurer has managed to secure in recent years. Other announcements include deals with Hang Seng Bank (majority owned by HSBC Group), Revolut, Techcombank, InsurTech Medici and US tech group, NetSPI. Of course, these partnerships don’t just happen. They are the result of a carefully crafted engagement strategy that sees the Chubb brand visible in places where its competitors simply do not have a presence.
Judy Tan, the Marcomms Lead for digital, oversees the various different activations that the company structures.
“We execute predominantly with an internal team, but we also use agency partners to get to the level of granularity that we need,” she explains.
“For example, with the Insurance for the New Possible podcasts that we produce, we have a dedicated specialist partner. The same goes for our research where we work with leading third-party consumer and professional data providers.”
From a marketing perspective, these activations are key to positioning Chubb’s digital proposition in a place of superiority within the market ecosystem. Lazaro explains that this approach ensures that those companies who are open to collaborative strategies will better understand the potential that exists from working with Chubb.
“Participating in events like Money 20/20 Asia provides us with an opportunity to showcase not only Chubb’s products, and integration tech platform – Chubb Studio – but also to demonstrate our co-design approach to partnering, positioning Chubb as a partner of choice,” he says.
“We engage in events that provide opportunities to network and learn more about the competitive landscape, challenges, and expectations for that sector. At these events, we want to have meaningful conversations and connect with the market ecosystem.”
Strong numbers
Chubb’s revenues from Asia accounted for around 20% of its revenues in 2023, with more than three quarters of this money from its consumer-focused business. During that year, Asia generated net premium growth of 25% compared to the previous year (excluding Japan), while life premiums grew by more than 80%.
The company attributes this to its ability to cross-sell coverage across its P&C and life product lines. As at the end of 2023, the company had a direct marketing operation in Asia of more than 7,000 telemarketers and distribution partnership agreements that offers access to “hundreds of millions of customers,” according to the insurer’s published letter to investors.
The company’s efforts in partnerships and strategically focussed activations are designed to meet ambitious business objectives of consumer premium revenue that exceeds $1 billion in 2024, with more than 40% of that targeted to originate in Asia.
“We have seen strong demand in both Asia and Latin America, driven by factors such as economic growth, the underserved lower- and middle-class consumers, and a pervasive use of technology,” Lazaro explains.
The company believes that its plans for a significant presence at Singapore Fintech Festival, ITC and the other iterations of the Money 20/20 franchise, will support this ongoing commercial approach.
Its activations at these major events demonstrate considerable planning and strategic thinking. In Asia, the company combined its Money 20/20 exhibition stand with partner drinks, a tech demonstration and speeches on the main stage from the company’s chief digital business officer Sean Ringsted, along with various commercial partners.
At last year’s Singapore Fintech Festival, Chubb also hosted a series of “live” podcasts, on-site, including 13 live interviews that were broadcast during the event, featuring both partners and non-partners.
“The most valuable feedback after the event was qualitative. It came from meaningful conversations arising from the topics discussed,” Lazaro explains. “We carefully address the quantity and quality of networking opportunities and leads when making decisions about renewing our event participation.”
Integrated content
As illustrated by the podcasting and research examples, Chubb’s digital business fully leverages and integrates content throughout its campaigns and strategies. It uses the market knowledge it captures through its own channels and blends that with information from partners and their end clients to develop a comprehensive understanding of the entire market ecosystem.
“We place a great deal of importance on understanding our partners, their business and customers,” Lazaro says. “That’s why we also conduct research and publish reports.”
The company’s approach to content is every bit as structured as its distribution strategy. Through its ‘stories’ platform on the main Chubb website, there is a vast array of choice for potential Chubb partners and clients.
The assets can be filtered by both topic and/or type, ensuring that stakeholders can find relevant content swiftly and without aggravated navigation. Assets include structured web sections for thematic enterprise pieces, articles, whitepapers, reports, videos and podcasts. There are very few financial organisations that integrate content into the broader marketing programme in the way that Chubb does on a global scale.
The breadth of topics covered is also quite remarkable. While many organisations cover investor relations communications, Diversity and ESG, Chubb has an astonishing library covering citizenship, claims, commercial risk, consumer risk, communities, digital, people and more.
The business recently published several larger pieces of research, one of which outlined attitudes towards embedded insurance, using one major hero asset and more easily digestible bitesize write-offs.
One of the larger hero assets, “Banks and the Digital Wallet Race: The Embedded Insurance Strategy”, was based on research with 2,000 global consumers and 200 executives at financial organisations.
Findings from the report have been deconstructed into a microsite with real life case studies. A smaller summary report has also been produced for the media and for sales enablement purposes. The considered integration between content, research, media and sales is impressive, even for seasoned corporate communications experts.
Lazaro says that, as corporations increasingly look to become technology-driven, the need to underscore the importance of insurance solutions is also growing.
“Embedded insurance is a major theme that fintechs are embracing and it’s a place where Chubb can add value and trust,” he says. “81 per cent of fintech executives, globally, now believe that insurance is a must have,” he adds, citing the research from the aforementioned research. “74% of financial executives believe that embedded insurance helps them to build trust with customers.”