Singlife entered the local market in 2020, around the same time the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Apart from its economic impact, people also feared the expensive medical bills that came with contracting the virus. Armed with advanced insurance technologies, Singlife Philippines quickly pivoted its launch plans and offered Cash for Dengue Costs with a FREE COVID-19 cover.
Together with GCash, the country’s biggest e-wallet provider, a large group of customers were given the opportunity to buy a protection product that provides medical coverage of up to PHP 421,500 for as low as PHP 700 per year. GCash’s sister company, Globe Telecom Inc. saw how this can also benefit their customers, so it partnered with Singlife Philippines to offer a FREE 3-month promo version with up to PHP 140,500 in total cash benefits for their subscribers.
“We started Singlife based on our belief that everyone should have an equal chance to build a better financial future. Life insurance plays an essential part in that,” said Rien Hermans, president & CEO of Singlife Philippines. “Up until now, the industry’s focus has been mainly on the higher income segments when the most affected by unforeseen expenses are the middle class. These hardworking parents, office workers, small business owners, and young professionals who aspire to secure their finances for the benefit of their loved ones are greatly underserved by existing players.”
“There is a disconnect between what financial agents or advisors prioritize and what clients need. Additionally, old technology platforms or core legacy systems most life insurance companies still use are difficult to scale. A structural overhaul of their technology stacks would be very challenging and expensive to do.”
Singlife Philippines, in contrast, was born digital to the core. It uses the smartest technologies to make life insurance totally mobile-first, with automated efficiencies to fit customers’ needs, budget, and desire for protection products to always be on hand.
“Think of it as putting together LEGO pieces, but instead of following the building instructions, we got creative and assembled an entirely different model to deliver financial solutions that are new and relevant to customers,” explained Zayd Tolentino, chief technology officer of Singlife Philippines.
“We built our system from the ground up using microservices that break insurance functions into individual business components. Each one performs an independent task and runs in unison with other services to automatically plan for scale, sustainability, and avoid potential failures. In this way, we can ensure our customers get the same seamless, end-to-end digital experience that they are used to with other digital services.”
Singlife Philippines recently surpassed the 100,000 mark for Globe promo joiners and continues to gain thousands more daily. The highest by far is close to 10,000 new customers in a single day. This is an impressive technological feat considering all contracts were delivered within the same day and if compared to a market in which all life insurance companies combined issue less than 5,000 policies per day on average.
“Our ability to execute thousands of customer-triggered tasks effectively and efficiently at any given time is not something incumbent life insurers can claim to do,” added Tolentino. “Indeed, we chose the more complex route in building our system because when financial needs of people vary from one person to the other, then a one-size-fits-all solution simply will not do.”
No-fuss protection, through and through
Keeping up with customer demands in a fast-paced digital economy, Singlife Philippines also uses technology to make managing policies, filing claims, and securing payouts just as easy – everything happens online and in real-time.
Elements of Singlife Philippines’ technology stack were carefully selected together with its parent company in Singapore, the region’s leader in technological advancements. For its product administration system, the company utilizes Galileo Platforms’ patented blockchain technology to improve transparency between parties, enhance data protection, and reduce administrative costs which can otherwise be used to add greater value to customers.
Singlife Philippines also uses Amazon Web Services to house all its applications and workloads in the Cloud. This serverless set up brings a new level of flexibility, agility, and speed to product development, testing, and deployment while maintaining the highest level of security and compliance.
“Our technology-first approach enables us to deliver superior products to our customers in a fully digital environment for a fraction of the costs. This will certainly change the way people look at and experience life insurance. More importantly, it will open doors for more people to finally take control of how they save and get protected,” ended Hermans.