Tune Protect Group Bhd recently held its inaugural "Tech-Focused Corporate Day" for analysts, investors and the media. Themed "Embedded Insurance, Simplified by Tech", the event sought to showcase the group's application programming interface (API) technology developed in-house, MarZ and Zeus, which are being used in more than 60 countries. According to Tune Protect Group CEO Rohit Nambiar, the company's insurance technology (insurtech) platform is a one-stop shop that powers solutions for affinity partners, products, distribution, and partnerships.

"The group is able to provide an insurtech platform for its partners through White Label, to distribute their insurance propositions and solutions. This capital-light digital platform model lowers the barriers of entry to small, nimble and agile organisations, and allows them the flexibility and scalability to expand their business while maintaining cost efficiencies," Rohit said.

He added that the group has also developed turnkey digital solutions that comprise a comprehensive sales management tool and an extensive API framework designed to provide greater value to its partners. With this digital solution, the group has an edge in capitalising on the rising digitalisation and technology trends that would also see its technology arm, White Label, evolve into a profit centre.

"We believe that this transformation and the Group's insurtech arm, White Label Sdn Bhd will put Tune Protect on an accelerated path to become one of the leading insurtech players in Malaysia and in the Asean region," Rohit said.

As it is, the group is already an Asean-based digital lifestyle insurer with an extensive global footprint. It has adopted a mobile-first approach where products and propositions are sold and distributed digitally. The distributions are conducted through its own business-to-consumer (B2C) channels such as website and mobile app or its digital affinity partners via embedded insurance on various digital platforms.

As a vertically integrated insurer with general, life, reinsurance and tech propositions, Tune Protect could also offer strategic partnerships and collaborations with other insurers. This allows the group to play its role as an insurtech player more effectively with its target market in Malaysia, Asean and the Middle East.

In an email interview with The Edge, Rohit said, "As a Malaysia-based company, the group aims to be one of the leading insurtech players in the country. Aside from that, our ambition is to expand our presence in the Asean region."

Tune Protect Group has recently announced two new major partnerships in Vietnam, including a digital payment gateway. It also partnered with one of the largest fintech companies in Vietnam that has 15 million active individual users and more than 150,000 corporate clients. Prior to this, the group had started working with Bao Viet, the largest general insurance company in Vietnam, as well as MoMo, an e-wallet player, and Bamboo Airways.

Indonesia is another key market that Tune Protect Group is eyeing, given its market size, but expansion plans remain at a preliminary stage.

As for the Middle East region, the group recently secured Fly Arna as its sixth airline partner. Fly Arna is an Armenian low-cost carrier that is a joint venture between the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) and AirArabia Group. This is in addition to the group's other initiatives and collaborations in the Middle East with insurance partners, business-to-business (B2B) and B2B2B partners, particularly in the travel and lifestyle business segments.

According to Rohit, the group is looking beyond the traditional insurance or insurtech players in its White Label platform solutions and will focus on the development of three key business pillars: health, lifestyle, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Tune Protect is open to working with various partners that are looking to embed health, lifestyle and SME insurance solutions into their digital platforms. To date, the group has collaborated with 65 partners globally in diverse industries such as aviation, property, logistics and telecommunications; not to mention services including e-wallets, loyalty programmes, healthtech, aggregators, e-commerce and others.

"We are optimistic of the growth opportunities within the health, lifestyle and SME segments. Aside from winning new clients and market share, Tune Protect will be actively looking into ways to expand its services and offerings with each of its existing partners. By leveraging its White Label insurtech platform, the group will be able to offer broader and deeper collaborations with its partners," Rohit added.

Tune Protect's White Label insurtech platform will provide partners with a full and comprehensive range of services. As a fully vertically integrated insurer, Tune Protect can offer the full suite of general, life, reinsurance and tech, aside to technical assistance to partners on local partner sourcing, underwriting and reinsurance services. By consolidating its services and solutions under one roof, this will accelerate the discussions process and pave the way for smooth negotiations between Tune Protect and its partners. This also leads to agile product creation and customised solutions, given the group's holistic offerings.

The group's technology stack and software is built on an open source to facilitate its entities and business partners regionally in creating swifter products and distribute them across various channels. These flexible configurations allow for faster iterations at all interfaces, which are independent of the existing legacy IT platforms. The open digital architecture and modern software engineering of Tune Protect are key reasons for the faster time-to-market using the group's White Label as compared to the current norm in the insurance industry.

Apart from that, the group's White Label insurtech platform offers other key differentiators including significant cost and time savings for its partners. This is important as the development of technology and a digital platform for new insurers will take time and could be costly. By leveraging the White Label insurtech platform, the group's partners will save costs and achieve their business goals at an accelerated pace. Instead of developing their own digital solutions from scratch, they could take advantage of Tune Protect's strong exposure and experience in digital and tech solutions for the insurance industry.

The White Label platform is also a risk-averse method for its partners since the charges are based on a certain percentage of service fee on the gross written premiums that run through the platforms. The total cost of ownership is much lower since Tune Protect uses open-source tools that allow its partners to build their product offerings faster. Meanwhile, distribution could also be done without the need to invest heavily in large-scale core system transformation.

Tune Protect's White Label platform also allows connection to various external partners, marketplace and digital platforms through open REST APIs. Apart from that, its partners could also leverage the mobile app white-labelled solution that ensures a smooth customer experience. Since Tune Protect has a strong established app with practical functions and happy customers, its partners could use the white-label business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) mobile app solution. Meanwhile, for those who want control of their own B2B platform, there is also a pre-integrated B2B portal, which could easily be managed and scaled according to different needs. Technical issues that arise within the digital platform could also easily be resolved by leveraging Tune Protect's tech expertise.

From a customer point of view, the priority is on the ease and convenience of obtaining products or services affordably. Based on recent trends, digitalisation, personalisation and embedded insurance are key focus areas as they form a greater overall drive to provide a better experience for customers. Embedded insurance is most pronounced in the digital ecosystem and e-commerce platforms as they offer value propositions to customers. Tune Protect believes that it is vital that the White Label insurtech platform offers a seamless customer journey experience that amplifies the value-added propositions of embedded insurance.

Tune Protect became the first Malaysian insurer to host its core system in the cloud in April 2022. This represents another milestone for Tune Protect and the insurtech industry in Malaysia as the group continues to push forward technology that simplifies customer experience.

The group's CEO Rohit said, "During the first phase of the new core system that was launched in the cloud in October, the modules that form the building blocks of the White Label insurtech platform are SAP cloud analytics, finance operations, management of policy, claims, products and quote, commission, organisations and reinsurance. A total of eight agency products have also gone live during the first phase and the group is looking at telematics and hyper-personalisation in its next phase."

The hosting of its core system on cloud means that all customer records are stored securely in centralised, workflow processes that are simplified and automated. This enables policies to be processed immediately and allows Tune Protect to achieve speed-to-market with innovation as well as greater efficiency and data accuracy.

According to Rohit, a collective push to move towards cloud is vital for the insurtech industry in Malaysia to grow. He added that a shift towards the cloud infrastructure will empower other more innovative tools to be utilised and improve the industry. While leading insurtech players such as Tune Protect have led on the innovation front, regulatory support will further accelerate the industry's growth.

"We believe that the enhancement in our mobile app journey is vital to facilitate hyper-personalisation and hyper-customisation. With the rise of Internet of Things and digitalisation, both conventional insurers and insurtech players will collect more data on their customers. For example, data on customers' driving behaviour and lifestyle could result in better discounts on medical and health insurance," Rohit explained.

He added that Tune Protect has successfully launched PUMP, a digital healthtech feature on its mobile app that can track users' health and wellness as well as offer rewards for being healthy.

The massive data available in today's era allows insurtech players such as Tune Protect to propose suitable products and recommendations that meet customers' needs based on their behaviour. Cross-selling of relevant products that appeal to customers could also be prompted with the data available.

Rohit shared that the response to the group's mobile app's new feature has been positive. The mobile app, currently available in Malaysia and Thailand, has been downloaded more than five times during the first nine months of 2022 as compared to the same period the year before.