Month: December 2017

After fantastic three years at Zurich it’s time today to say Goodbye and to thank all the fantastic people, who supported us and me to change Zurich with a disruptive approach and with a dramatic speed. I am very grateful for all the things I could learn and do. I believe not very often in their business life people can participate in a massive transformation like this. We not only introduced a new Core Insurance system within a record two years, we also implemented an Open API on top and implemented a lot of other radical changes detailed by this One Pager: All those changes were backed by the board members and are live today. Now it’s time to reaping the benefits and to continuing the transformation in a platform economic way. And because this was not enough we also operated the first and impressive Insurhack Hackathon in Germany and did it again this year. With all this in mind I must admit I’m not really leaving  Zurich. I’m just continuing my dream of creating Platform Economic Financial Institutions with Open APIs, new and  pure digital Core Systems and by developing them (back) to Software and Hardware Companies. In the new year I’ve got the change to support a traditional and successful bank in their brave move leaving existing boundaries and developing to a vertical platform and Fintech bank. That said I’m not leaving or changing my ‘travel plans’ I’m just continuing on my path. Zurich Insurance in Germany really surprised me. It was a much better experience than expected. I learned if the board members and managers exactly know what you want to do and decide fast and precisely even big projects like this transformation don’t fail. Transparency in transformation is king. We will all meet again, I’ sure. Oliver@Zurich  

This blog is all about delivery. Delivery is highlighted due to my experiences that most corporate innovation initiatives struggle in delivering in spite of having the right idea and the right team in place. WayGuard is one of the rare exceptions. And a very special exception as well, one we can learn from. WayGuard not only impressively delivered its service to more than 100K customers. WayGuard finally and successfully implemented a very old Insurance idea:  Usually an Insurance just sells a promise. A promise to pay in the case of a claim. It’s neither a product in a traditional sense nor is this really a security service. But most Insurance companies claim since decades to sell security and safety. Now AXA with Wayguard really delivers security without forcing the user to being or becoming an AXA insurance customer. I assume it’s not easy to convince your board members to invest money in ideas like Wayguard, where it’s still difficult to measure success and thus its influence on customer gains and BOP. But the AXA board believed and still believes in an approach like this – I think a very smart and courageous move. And the way the AXA team with its head Albert Dahmen identified the final idea is also worth talking about: In an interview approach the AXA team was on the streets asking ordinary people what could make their day to day life more secure. They did not ask for insurance products, even did not present themselves as insurance employes. And after days and weeks of interviews one of the interviewed answered: ‘I always call my boyfriend when I have to pass dark und unpleasant areas on my way home!’.  And this answer was the birth of Wayguard, Albert Dahmen commented . How WayGuard works is detailed on the WayGuard website and within the app. It provides a simple, convincing, stable user interface and is more or less self-explanatory. In a nutshell: WayGuard accompanies while you feel unsafe, by a professional team and in addition by one of your peers managed within the app. And WayGuard is an emergency app either, where the emergency center knows exactly where you are. And this service already saved a young girl’s life this summer. Before becoming unconscious the teenager pressed WayGuard’s alarm button. The alarmed service found the 17 years girl with help of the transferred GPS data (see Police report). WayGuard has its own Facebook fan page with more than 40K fans. It can be downloaded via Apple Appstore or Google Play. But this is not the end, Albert told me. They are already working on new and next  ideas. Another one has been released recently and is called latebird.  I was really impressed visiting the small team behind WayGuard. Not only because of their technologies, their  apps, their numbers, their ideas, their way of working, their offices within the fancy area of Schanzenstrasse in Cologne, but how they really brought this all together:

1. Focusing Innovation
2. Focusing the customer’s need and
3. Focusing Delivery

 

How to understand the Thermonuclear Threat of Cryptocurrencies

And you don’t need  Bitcoin for this.  Due to its technical limitations  Bitcoin doesn’t even have the necessary potential for this kind of nuclear disruption in my eyes. But others have.  Others like Stellar Lumen and Satoshi Pay. Give both a try.  Be a customer paying with Satoshi Pay using the new Satoshi Pay WordPress Plugin. (WordPress plugin with Pay and Top Up Option via Satoshi Pay) Or be a publisher and try to monetize  your contents and goods with micropayments.   (Satoshi Dashboard – Content bought with 1 Lumen via WordPress Plugin) Once done and recognized how fast and simple and how cheap micropayments work, for both, the seller and the buyer,  you will feel this new threat. A payment works within a second. A Top Up didn’t take more than 5 seconds either. The transfer of some Lumen from Kraken to Stellar was done within 5 seconds as well. If you, like me, are coming from the traditional banking industry this all is really impressive! And exactly these depicted revolutionary new processes here let you very easily understand, why people are buying cryptocurrencies like hell. They believe, like I do either, that this all will change the world of banking and payments forever. Give it try and buy for only 1 Lumen one empty content page via my blog  🙂