Innovation and Digital

Since 2020, a.s.r. has been implementing a digital strategy aimed at substantially improving the customer experience, the realisation of its digital ambition and on increasing its innovative strength. The bundling of IT, data and digital talent in a single organisation will lead to mutual reinforcement of expertise and a.s.r. plans to accelerate development in the field of data science and further realise its digital ambitions.

A major achievement in 2023 was to give customers from all business lines access to ‘Mijn a.s.r.’. For advisors, a new digital cloud-based platform has been launched. At the end of 2023, a.s.r. has launched its app for customers. To improve customer care, a.s.r. is connecting all its customers to a Customer Relationship Management system which gives employees a better understanding of the customer. By introducing features to classify and summarise calls, to support voice routing and to identify customers before they reach the call agent, a.s.r. is able to enhance customer satisfaction and efficiency.

In 2023, 56% of a.s.r. customers were digitised customers. The ambition is to achieve a customer digitisation level of 70% by the end of 2024, including Aegon NL. With a lower digitisation level at Aegon NL, it seems a challenging target. During the conversion, a.s.r. will pay extra attention to the enhancement of the digitisation level of its customers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) creates new opportunities for insurers and will impact many aspects of the business operations. The different forms of AI, such as voice, text and pattern recognition, offer added value to a.s.r. For example, Health conducted a pilot project with Large Language Models in 2023 in order to record and analyse calls from customers. AI offers enormous opportunities, but a.s.r. is aware that it also entails new risks and ensures that it deals responsibly with the use of data. a.s.r. embraces the ethical framework developed by the Dutch Association of Insurers for ethical, self-aware and customer-oriented handling of customer data and to promote AI.

In recent years, the deployment of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has grown considerably within a.s.r. As a result, employees have more time to focus on complex and challenging work. The arrival of ‘smart robots’ further increases the possibilities. An example is the deployment of the smart robot Jade in the Non-life domain, to accelerate handling of claims. Jade classifies reports and passes them on to the right team for the further handling of the claim.

Focus on IT security

Improvement of cyber resilience remains a continual focus point, both through investments in protection, detection and response systems and employees and also through security awareness initiatives. Cyber security is on the MB and SB agenda. There were no significant cyber security incidents involving a.s.r. systems in 2023.

In almost all security incidents, social engineering provides the entry point for cybercriminals. Therefore, a.s.r. invests considerable effort in training employees to recognise possible threats, e.g. with a.s.r.'s automated phishing simulation platform.

The preparations for the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) are ongoing, in order to ensure that a.s.r. will comply with the DORA by the end of 2024.

a.s.r. has a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) who reports to the CEO, via the Director Group Risk Management. As the secretary of the Non-Financial Risk Committee, the CISO also reports directly to the COO/CTO who is the Chair of this Committee.

a.s.r. has received an ISAE 3000 type II statement for the service commission of the central IT department to the various business segments for 2023.

Integration of Aegon NL

a.s.r.'s IT strategy enables the business units to execute their strategies, in terms of both new business opportunities and operational excellence. The investments in operational efficiency of recent years will repay themselves in the approach to the integration of Aegon NL. IT makes a substantial contribution to the synergy through a tried and tested data migration approach to the target environment, after which most of the Aegon IT systems can be decommissioned. In the target state, this will ultimately save about 80% of the Aegon NL IT costs. Because the last migrations will not take place until 2026, this synergy will be realised in stages. Furthermore, direct migration from the Aegon Group environment to the a.s.r. target environment will avoid the need to invest in temporary solutions and purchase temporary infrastructure.

By the end of 2023, the new platform for Pensions DC was almost finalised. The platform is already live for new business and the migration from the current DC platform will be completed early 2024. Efficiency gains are also expected from the replacement of the individual disability systems. Both projects are also prerequisites for the decommissioning of the mainframe platform.