Average score complaint handling (1-10)
8.4
Digitised customers (in %)
54.1
3.1.3.1Customer focus
a.s.r. focuses on creating value for its customers, including private and corporate clients, as well as institutional investors through asset management services. a.s.r.'s core mission is to help people, it does this by ensuring that every product and service a.s.r. offers adds meaningful value. By prioritising customer needs, a.s.r. fosters strong connections and continuously improves customer satisfaction. Which contributes to ensuring that every customer interaction is meaningful and that a.s.r. remains responsive to their needs.
Customer research and social responsibility
Consumers are increasingly concerned about social and environmental issues such as climate change and inequality. These concerns influence their purchasing decisions, including which insurance providers they choose. To stay aligned with customer expectations, a.s.r. conducts an annual research to track consumer attitudes towards corporate social responsibility. Also, a.s.r.'s reputation on sustainability is measured on a weekly basis.
Alongside this, a.s.r. uses multiple Net Promoter Score (NPS) metrics, namely the NPS-r (overall relationship), NPS-p (process level), and NPS-c (contact level), all used to measure and improve customer satisfaction. Starting in 2025, NPS-i will be implemented to evaluate satisfaction based on specific interactions, providing deeper insights into how customers experience their service with a.s.r.
Raad van Doen: Involving customers and advisors
The Raad van Doen is an online panel that engages customers, entrepreneurs and advisors in shaping the future of a.s.r. Through this panel, private and business customers and advisors provide feedback on a.s.r.'s services, helping guide product development and advocate for customer interests. The panel also allows a.s.r. to gather insights on customer expectations around sustainability in products and services.
By involving customers directly in co-creation and dialogue, a.s.r. continuously refines the offerings which ensures that evolving customer needs are met.
Customer contact strategy: Consistent and seamless experience
The customer contact strategy aims to create a consistent, seamless experience for all customers. To achieve this, the focus lies on three key areas:
Standardising communication channels: Unifying contact channels ensures a consistent customer experience and helps guide customers across various business lines and products.
Reducing Low-Impact interactions: By eliminating non-value-added contacts through self-service solutions, simple tasks are made easier for customers.
Creating High-Impact interactions: a.s.r. focuses on delivering meaningful, high-value interactions during crucial moments when customers need help the most.
These strategies help ensure that customers, advisors, and employers receive consistent, efficient service tailored to their needs.
Operational excellence and customer focus during transition
As a.s.r. undertakes the Aegon NL portfolio migration, NPS helps to maintain focus on customer satisfaction by measuring how changes internal processes affect the customer experience. By continuously gathering feedback, a.s.r. can make data-driven decisions that ensure operational improvements align with customer needs.
Warm Welcome for new clients
A key initiative for a.s.r. is providing a so-called 'Warm Welcome' to clients migrating from the Aegon NL portfolio. a.s.r. aims to make this transition as seamless as possible, ensuring minimal effort for customers. The goal is to ensure that both customers and advisors understand the process and feel supported throughout the transition.
a.s.r. measures the success of this initiative using operational KPIs such as churn rate, inbound contact rate, first-contact resolution, and self-service rate. These metrics help to assess how effectively a.s.r. supports new customers and ensures a smooth transition experience.
3.1.3.2Complaints management
Within a.s.r., a dedicated complaints management team monitors the implementation of the a.s.r. complaints policy and oversees the complaints procedure. The actual handling of complaints is decentralised within the organisation. The key principles of complaints management are:
a.s.r. is open to complaints and facilitates customers to submit a complaint.
a.s.r. communicates its view and the proposed solution for the complaint in a comprehensible and transparent manner.
a.s.r. aims to learn and improve from complaints.
a.s.r. regards the handling of complaints as a matter requiring specific knowledge and skills. Complaints handlers keep their knowledge up-to-date through continuous education, for instance by following training courses in the field of customer service. Customers assign the a.s.r. complaints handlers an average score of 8.4 out of 10 (2023: 8.1).
(in %)
Complaints as a source for improvements
a.s.r. aims to be the best financial service provider, with the most satisfied customers and advisors. The significant leap forward in customer satisfaction requires an acceleration in digitalisation. a.s.r.'s digital ambition is challenging, and it is therefore crucial to continuously monitor the customer experience. Input for this is partly derived from complaints from customers and advisors. As indicated above in the core principles, complaints are always an important source for improvements.
(in numbers)
- 1 Assigned complaints are either partially or fully justified complaints. Rejected complaints are either unjustified complaints (complaints classified by a.s.r. as unjustified) and unfounded complaints (complaints that are not intended for a.s.r.).
- 2 The 2024 results include the Aegon NL figures (of which 572 are assigned, 1267 are rejected and 352 are unknown).
Updated quality monitoring
Quality monitoring is embedded in a.s.r.'s Complaints Policy. Complaint handlers and complaint coordinators continuously assess each other's complaint files against the established quality criteria, translated into 20 questions about the quality of complaint handling. The criteria are derived from the external complaints procedure, the customer promise, and uniform working agreements. This contributes positively and critically to improving the quality of our products, service and performance.
Learning from 'portal' complaints
An interdepartmental investigation has been started into the causes of the so-called 'portal' complaints. All of these complaints, received by a.s.r. in the first half of 2024, from customers and advisors about the digital environments have been analysed. An immediate action resulting from the initial analysis is that an MT member will call back customers with a 'portal' complaint. a.s.r. places great value on the involvement of MT members in complaints handling and sees this as an opportunity to better understand the digital customer experience and the complaints of customers. With the insights gained from this initial analysis and the experiences from the callbacks, a deeper analysis will take place in 2025 to further define the pain points, opportunities, and priorities of these complaints. Doing so, complaints play a crucial role in enhancing a.s.r.'s digital customer experience.
3.1.3.3IT and the digital strategy
Innovation and Digital
Since 2020, a.s.r. has been implementing a digital strategy to enhance customer experience, achieve digital ambition and increasing its innovative strength. The digital technology choices made allowed a.s.r. to successfully implement at scale a number of improvements in customer journeys. Customers expect self-service for ‘low impact’ contacts and would like to have the possibility to interact with an a.s.r. employee for ‘high impact’ contacts. The digital strategy enables this, eliminating a high number of unnecessary calls and improving customer satisfaction at the same time.
AI in combination with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), offers enormous opportunities. a.s.r. will adopt AI as a game changing enabler to achieve strategic goals, especially in realisation of the growth ambition in a scalable, cost effective way. Currently, a.s.r. is investing in the foundations for AI and implementing a number of AI initiatives to experiment and learn as an organisation. Next step is to build a strategic portfolio of AI initiatives aligned with the overall business strategy. Examples of AI solutions in production are an AI tool for call centre agents that automates call registration and analyses, and an AI assistant for the call agents to provide the best answers to customer questions. This allows a.s.r. to continuously improve the customer interaction based on the data collected.
In addition to these examples a.s.r. implemented a number of AI solutions, all currently aimed at improving efficiency in the organisation without directly impacting customers. a.s.r. is aware that it also entails new risks and ensures that it uses data responsibly. 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 early 2024, the new Pension DC platform was successfully launched and policies were migrated to the new platform. With this milestone an important step was set to complete the back office rationalisation programs. During 2024, the Aegon NL integration of all Non-life policies is completed. Only integration of Pension DB and the administration for Aegon NL individual life customers need to be completed next years.
During the integration of Aegon NL, a.s.r. was able to keep the proportion of digitised customers at the same level of 54.1%. a.s.r. has successfully launched an onboarding programme for Aegon NL customers, effectively incorporating digital onboarding into the product migration process. a.s.r.’s focus for 2025 is to increase the NPS-i and to guide customer towards digital channels.
Focus on IT security
a.s.r. has an Information Security Policy, which is approved by the Non-Financial Risk Committee (NFRC) and a.s.r. Risk Committee. Improvement of cyber resilience remains a continual focus point, through investments in protection, detection and response systems and awareness initiatives for employees. Cyber security is regularly on the agenda for the MB and SB. 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 NFRC, the CISO also reports directly to the COO/CTO, who is the Chair of this Committee.
There were no significant cyber security incidents involving a.s.r. systems in 2024. However, a.s.r. was indirectly involved in a hack of one of its suppliers in the domain of document printing. 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, for example. with a.s.r.'s automated phishing simulation platform. a.s.r. implemented all requirements of Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) before the deadline of the end of 2024.
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 2024. The accountant concluded that the controls related to the control objectives stated in the description of the ICT service system were adequately designed and the tested controls, necessary to provide reasonable assurance that those control objectives were achieved, operated effectively during the reporting period.
Dilemma - Artificial Intelligence: a game changer that brings both opportunities and risks
It is therefore crucial to find a balance between promoting AI and ensuring its responsible use. To do this as effectively as possible, a.s.r. assesses the use of AI against various ethical frameworks and closely monitors its environmental impact. This requires insight into the value chain (suppliers), effective supervision, trained employees, reliable data, a structured development process, and a modern data landscape.
Artificial Intelligence is developing at a rapid pace. a.s.r. is committed to investigate both the risks and opportunities related to AI. AI tools can help achieve strategic goals and contribute to becoming even more scalable and cost-effective. We are aware of some of the risks associated with AI, like data privacy concerns, compliance with the European AI act, ethical considerations, and energy consumption. By using a secure a.s.r.-only technical environment for its data, adopting the ethical framework of Dutch Association of Insurers (Verbond van Verzekeraars), and selecting vendors that strive to become climate neutral, a.s.r. is able to manage these risks effectively.
One important aspect of introducing AI is understanding the extent to which it will affect a.s.r.’s workforce. The first applications in production show that the application of AI will affect employees in various ways. For some, it will mean acquiring new skills to apply AI in their field of work. The availability of new data sources will allow for continuous improvement of customer service and process optimisation. For others, AI will eliminate routine tasks, leaving the more complex tasks to be handled by the employee. The introduction of AI in the call centre has already proven that some employees can’t, and others don’t want to, change their current way of working. The expectation is that AI tools will impact most, if not all, employees. Although a.s.r. has successfully applied AI in some areas, the full impact on its workforce is still unclear at this stage. Employees are key stakeholders of a.s.r., and for some employees the changes will be experienced as positive, while for others, they may be experienced as negative. The journey ahead will create uncertainty for a.s.r.’s employees. At the same time, a.s.r. is determined to continue to apply AI applications to contribute to achieving its strategic goals.
In 2025, more clarity will be provided about the expected impact on employees, both in terms of the number of people affected in certain domains and the required skills and new ways of working. The employees of a.s.r. will be provided with generic and tailormade AI training and assisted with how to deal with change and uncertainty while a.s.r. embarks on this exciting journey.
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