This article first appeared in Personal Wealth, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on Feb 1 - 7, 2016.

Liberty Insurance Bhd, formerly known as Uni.Asia General Insurance Sdn Bhd, is transforming itself to compete head-to-head with the big boys in the industry.

Indeed, the era of standalone insurance companies owned by individuals has gone. In the general insurance space, there are only 22 companies in Malaysia today, 70% to 80% of which are already foreign-owned or have seen a significant percentage of foreign equity participation.

“It is a new world of big boys, and you will see fewer standalones in the future,” says Liberty Insurance CEO David Tan.

Liberty Seguros, a subsidiary of the Boston-based Liberty Mutual Group, bought Uni.Capital Sdn Bhd’s 68% stake in Uni.Asia General Insurance about 18 months ago. Since then, things have changed as the company begins to take advantage of Liberty Seguros’ expertise and global presence. 

“I am excited and so is everyone at the company. We are now a global company with more room to grow and a bright future. We can now leverage the parent’s global experience and expertise to come out with more and better products for our customers,” says Tan.

The company will also benefit from its parent’s global best practices. Already, some of its employees, such as those in the actuarial department, have been sent abroad for training and exposure.

Tan himself has visited the group’s operations in Hong Kong, Thailand and Portugal. “The opportunity to travel and widen our experience and exposure have become part of our talent management,” he says.

Customer experience has been given renewed emphasis. While it is not new at Liberty Insurance, efforts to enhance the customer eperience have intensified significantly. 

“We know customer service, but the degree of execution was not as aggressive. Now, we have to step it up — not one notch, but several notches. The group tells us how important the customer is. And not just talk; walk it,” says Tan.

As a start, the company has spent a huge amount of money to renovate the customer service centre on the first floor of its headquarters at Menara Liberty. Several CCTVs have been installed to ensure that additional staff will be allocated when the customer queues become too long. 

“We have walk-in customers and our people need to monitor this. Why? The manager looks at the CCTV, and if the queue is long and people have to wait too long, he will immediately redeploy people from upstairs. Customers will not have to wait,” says Tan. 

One of the things he is doing as the new CEO is to prepare talent for the company going forward. “We have seen progress in the last six to seven years, and our team of people are essentially here. If anything, I am building a younger group of people to prepare the company for the next 5 to 10 years.”

In this regard, now that Liberty Insurance is part of a global group, recruitment has beome easier. The company can also nurture its talent with the resources of the group.

Tan says the company is also changing its internal culture. An area is staff engagement, which has become more active. While Tan does not compromise on ensuring that counters are manned during festive seasons, it has started “Casual Fridays”, allowing employees to dress down.

“Headquarters wants me to engage the staff and get their feedback. We do in-house surveys, and according to feedback, they don’t want to have to wear a tie on Fridays. So good, we hear you,” he says.

Tan says the rebranding of Uni.Asia to Liberty has been a success so far. Now, the company is aiming to leverage Liberty Mutual Group’s global experience and expertise to become a “one-stop centre” for motor insurance on the retail side.

He says almost every vehicle you can imagine on the road can get an insurance policy from Liberty. This includes two-wheelers, four-wheelers, 16-wheel vehicles and even armoured cars. 

“You walk into our office and we will give you whatever policy you want. If you have a bus, whether it is a school, tour, factory or workers’ bus, we can provide you with an insurance policy. We even insure armoured cars, as it is required by the JPJ [Road Transport Department] to be insured before paying the road tax.”

Tan says being a one-stop centre for retail motor insurance is easier said than done. That is because motor insurance is not always a profitable business and some insurance companies shy away from it.

This is where the Malaysian Motor Insurance Pool (MMIP) comes into play. Tan says a pool of insurance companies is coming together to take up the motor insurance business as it is mandatory in Malaysia, and the risks will be shared among them.

“We are a major distributor of the MMIP products. And if we do not have our own product to insure your vehicle, we will have the MMIP products,” he says.

At the same time, Liberty Insurance will continue to offer property and casualty insurance, which make up the second and third largest segments of its business. Almost 80% of the company’s business currently comes from motor insurance.

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