Ever wondered what the future of insurance looks like? Just ask Sibusiso Mbingo, CIO of glu Mutual. After nearly two years in the role, he takes CIO South Africa on an insightful journey into what it takes to build a future-fit, customer-focused insurer.
It’s been 20 months since CIO Sibusiso Mbingo joined PPS’s new ventures division or ‘Project Gemini’ – that’s what it was called at the time. It has now been officially launched as glu, a division of PPS. Sibusiso outlines what it took to get to this momentous occasion and all the heavy lifting it required from a technology perspective.
PPS is the only holistic financial services provider in South Africa that operates under the ethos of mutuality. It services postgraduate professionals like doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. As a division of PPS, glu was created to offer the mutuality model to more South Africans. Sibusiso joined glu as the third employee, and worked hand in glove with Michele Jennings, glu chief executive, to craft the new business’s technology strategy.
That quickly established glu as an innovative and technology-driven business. The overarching goal was to create a digital business empowered by technology, customer centricity, data-driven decision-making, simplicity and straight-through processing (STP). The team managed to do this all while creating true value for their members.
“An important component of the digital business was STP,” Sibusiso noted. “Traditionally, onboarding could take 30 to 90 days due to all the human intervention, and glu wanted to cut down that onboarding journey by investing heavily in technology and the automation of the processes. Our target was to issue a straight-through processing case from initial engagement, quote generation, policy capturing, underwriting and issuing of the policy in under 10 minutes.
“Our investment in technology and seamless partnership integration resulted in glu issuing an STP case in just under seven minutes. While that is important to us, we firmly believe that some clients need to interact with humans in the process. Fortunately, we allow for it, which is why we are ‘Digital with Heart,’” Sibusiso continues.
Build it themselves or partner up?
As a digital business, glu has embarked on a robust buy vs. build process. The company has involved industry and expects to ensure that the right partner is selected for the organisation’s modern architecture.
“We had to decide on building an entirely new system or acquiring one that already existed,” explains Sibusiso. “This is because one of our key principles is being a lean business. We started with a small team and have gradually grown while maintaining lean principles.’’
Through strong partnerships with reputable technology suppliers, glu’s ecosystem covers the entire technology spectrum, including the core Policy Administration system integrated into its finance system, customer servicing, internal staff collaboration and customer communication.
Sibusiso has recruited a handful of analysts in architecture, DevSecOps and quality assurance to run the entire platform. His team remains lean – only eight techies drive the daily running of glu. “The key with agile is to start small and grow from there,” he suggests. “Study what the market is saying and build on as you go along.”
The strategy has proved fruitful, as glu has gone from a handful of advisers during their pilot in November to a significant number of advisers selling glu products in recent weeks.
Putting the customer at the centre
According to Sibusiso, customer-centricity is at the heart of glu, from product creation to customer engagement. “The glu actuarial team embraces the ‘Think Customer’ spirit in everything they do. “So, we are careful to include channels for members who prefer working in analogue even though we are a digital business.”
In addition, Sibusiso and his team are very intentional about being a data-driven business. “Simplicity as a principle came into the picture.Insurance in its nature is complex: ask anyone in insurance, and they’ll tell you that even a small change takes a long time. To help streamline this, I wanted something so simple that anyone could capture a policy in such a way that ensures convenience and efficiency for both members and the adviser,” he explains.
With all this data going around, where does one store it? Sibusiso’s response was simple: “I don’t want any servers on-prem; everything runs on the cloud,” he says. “Then the security element comes in: two layers for internal employees and another cloud version for all our members, which puts our minds at ease as far as internal security is concerned – supported by an external security partner as well.”
Looking ahead, Sibusiso hopes to leverage AI to its fullest – it will play a significant role in our space in decision-making and tapping into our existing services. “For example, if someone wants to capture their policy information, as soon as they input their ID number, I want to be able to take that ID number, pull that person’s full details out from the system, populate all the screens, and ask you to merely validate the information instead of inputting it yourself,” he explains. “It is our dream to minimise the capturing of customers’ known data and AI can help us do that.”
The team is also currently driving a concept called glu-in-a-box, which aims to package the entire concept to enable it to be introduced into the other jurisdictions in which PPS operates with only basic configuration needed. “Soon you’ll see glu as a global brand,” he explains.
In the meantime, it’s taken less than two years to turn an idea into a fully functioning digital powerhouse that is threatening to shake up the industry. If that is what glu can do in 20 months, it’ll be interesting to stick around and see what happens next!
