“Digitalisation is offering us tremendous potential in Austria”

Our colleague Melinda Vida works at ERGO Austria in Vienna in the area of digital transformation and innovation management. She introduces us to the Austrian insurance market in an interview. Especially how customers in the Alpine republic are already living digitally – and the digital solutions and offerings that ERGO is using to make life easier for customers and employees.

Hi Melina, please start by telling us something about ERGO Austria: How are you structured?

With pleasure: We’ve only been operating under the ERGO brand since 2012, but we emerged from the union of VICTORIA-Volksbanken Versicherung and Bank Austria Versicherung. Thanks to our predecessor companies, we have deep roots and long-standing partnerships in the country, and we have been writing insurance business in Austria now for more than 100 years.

As a composite insurer, we have featured life, property and casualty insurance products in our portfolio for many decades. We expanded our offering in 2021 to include specific niche coverage in the area of health insurance. And the integration of D.A.S. Rechtsschutz AG at the end of August 2023 and is continuation as an ERGO product brand added a comprehensive legal expenses insurance offering to our portfolio.

What are your product lines, and what are your sales channels?

We offer our customers this comprehensive, market-based portfolio of product solutions and services, which is aligned with customer needs, in close cooperation with a variety of partners. Our sales and cooperation partners are Bank Austria/UniCredit, the cooperative banks, ERGO Vorsorgemanagement GmbH, our own field sales organisation, direct and online sales, as well as affiliated brokers and agents.

We are fully aware of our local responsibilities: we defined our understanding of sustainability through long-term value added for our customers, partners, shareholders and employees. We also made a voluntary commitment at a very early stage to assume responsibility for environmental aspects. And corporate responsibility is a living, integral element of our corporate strategy.

What makes your market and your customers tick, if we can generalise? In particular, how digitally savvy are they? Are there any notable differences between the Austrian and German markets that you are aware of?

It's really hard to generalise. However, I see the degree of digitalisation and the affinity for digitalisation in Austria as very similar to that in Germany. In certain areas, Austria is ahead, such as in digital public services. By contrast, Germany is somewhat more advanced in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud technologies (see Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2022).

The insurance market is still very much focused on personal contact, both when it comes to concluding contracts and providing customer care, partly due to the actions of major competitors. Online sales rates lag well behind those in Germany – but this does offer great potential for the future! One challenge in introducing new digital solutions is posed by regulatory requirements, especially data protection, which is interpreted very strictly in Austria in some aspects (keyword ‘Schrems’ verdicts).

Which digital solutions and offers do you use to adapt to changes in customer behaviour and expectations?

In view of our diverse product range and the different sales channels, we are also required to provide tailored support to hybrid customers. Events such as the coronavirus pandemic or the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence are further drivers in this regard.

We provide our digitally savvy customers with solutions that are optimised for their expectations via our website and our integrated customer portal, which offers numerous value-added self-service functions. This is complemented by our excellent customer and sales service, which has already won the Service Champion Award nine times in a row in 2023. And, of course, we offer those who prefer personal contact the full range of services provided by our ERGO sales force and our sales partners.

In this context, we also attach great importance to optimising our internal processes. The expansion of digital signature options, both for concluding contracts and for customer enquiries, simplifies and accelerates the handling of these processes. This is also supported by our AI solution for inbound management, developed together with ERGO Digital Ventures – whether it's through more precise assignment of customer enquiries or more efficient preparation for the specialist departments.

Which digital transformation milestones have you celebrated recently and what's next for you?

We have already achieved a number of milestones in the recent past, whether it's the expansion of our consulting and sales portal for our distribution channels, our customer portal or the optimisation of various internal processes.

In the course of the digital transformation, it is also of great importance to support our almost 1,000 employees. We recently introduced a new tool that makes digital work, collaboration and the exchange of ideas in communities easy in a modern solution – our ‘Modern Workplace’, based on Microsoft M365.

We will continue to examine our touchpoints for optimisation potential and analyse the further use of AI where it brings added value for us and for our customers and partners.

Interview: Ingo Schenk

Video with Melinda Vida

Watch the video with Melinda Vida on YouTube:

https://youtube.com/shorts/PAxQWBveO2U?feature=share