Q&A: RemitRadar's Emil Griston on the emerging customer

As well as facilitating the evolution of the (re)insurance industry, innovation is changing the world we live in and how we live. RemitRadar co-founder Emil Griston talks to Global Reinsurance about how a changing world is making way for an emerging customer, and explains how to cater to them.

RemitRadar is doing substantial work on AI and deep learning. How are the technologies being used to develop new insurance solutions?

We are enabling new insurance solutions to reach the customers. And we are enabling them in a way that we provide a much clearer picture of people’s needs. One issue is: how do we sell insurance to people who either are not much interested in buying or don’t believe in buying insurance?

To clarify, you mean the idea of insurance?

Not only the idea, but the relevance and necessity as a way of enabling a modern individual to fully use the opportunities of life in a new economy and world.

So you’re using AI to paint a picture of the customer?

We are painting a picture of the interests of the customer, and then we are trying to analyse and match the relevance of possible existing insurance products, or the necessity to formulate new products geared towards them.

It’s like a match-making solution.

Absolutely. People usually are interested in purchasing insurance when it’s necessary or relevant. We tell the industry when the individual is looking for the products they have.

Given your modern approach of matchmaking customer and product, what is your definition of

the ‘emerging customer’?

The emerging customer is not necessarily in a particular geography, or of particular sex or profession. Instead, they are people who generally do not use or view insurance as relevant. You can then fragment this group and say you have an enormous part of the world in developing

countries where insurance is seen as a rich man’s reality that doesn’t relate to them. Another section is millennials, who are saying, ‘insurance is so old fashioned, it doesn’t relate to us’. Millennials are our priority, because they encapsulate people in all countries, developing and developed. Because of

their reliance on gadgets and new technologies, their behaviour is similar. They cut across demographics.

It looks as though you’re targeting individuals who send money back to their families in various countries with your services. Why are you serving that group?

We are not targeting people who are doing money transfers, we are serving them, by way of bringing free knowledge – whether it’s knowledge in the money transfer field, or insurance.

This group has somehow been missed over the years. Firstly, this group sends and receives $600bn

annually. Also, this group is currently sitting on a reserve of $5tn. This is how much money is stashed in mattresses, or in non-productive financial organisations. This money is intended for consumption – for education, property, medical care, pharmaceuticals, clothes and food. It is also insurance, to pay for unforeseen expenses such as funerals. This group perceives traditional insurance as a sophisticated, out-of-reach product.

How are you re-educating this group on insurance introducing them to insurance products?

We’ve started to introduce insurance products so the benefits are clear to this target group. To do that, it needs to be free of charge to them. Onboarding of this group to the world of insurance

needs to come easily. The second part is: we are saying that this is a beginning of a process.

When you bring them on board and show them what they need to achieve, you can start introducing them to other elements of the insurance world that can and should be beneficial for them. We are talking to international organisations such as the UN, because they want to bring knowledge – and knowledge is everything. But knowledge without trial is just information. We give them the opportunity to try it.

RemitRadar co-founder Emil Griston will be a speaker at the Dubai World Insurance Congress 2018, organised by Global Reinsurance and the Dubai International Financial Centre. Visit www.dubaiwic.com for more information and to register.