Insurance Industry "Where Are the Digital Talents?"... Full Effort to Secure Workforce

Emergence of MZ Generation and Expansion of Non-Face-to-Face
Competition for Digital Transformation Talent Recruitment

Kim Byung-yoon, President in charge of IT at Mirae Asset Life Insurance

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] The insurance industry is fiercely competing to recruit digital experts.

Even if they are not well-versed in insurance, external personnel with expertise in digital are being brought in to accelerate digital transformation from a new perspective. The emergence of the digitally savvy MZ (Millennial + Z) generation and the COVID-19 pandemic have created a sense of urgency that delayed digital innovation could lead to obsolescence.

According to the insurance industry on the 18th, Samsung Life Insurance appointed Executive Director Hong Seon-gi on the 7th to work in the digital division. Executive Director Hong previously served as the Financial Cloud Technology Lead Partner at Amazon Web Services Korea. As a financial cloud expert, he is expected to play a role in strengthening Samsung Life Insurance’s digital strategy.

Samsung Life Insurance is aiming to become a ‘2024 Digital Intelligent Company’ and is promoting digital planning, new technology adoption, data innovation, and system operations centered around the Digital Innovation Office.

They are also engaging in digital research and development (R&D) through the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center and the Business Data Analytics (BDA) Center related to big data. Earlier this year, they introduced a digital diagnosis service that allows simple insurance underwriting within 5 minutes remotely.

Mirae Asset Life Insurance also recruited Kim Byung-yoon, president of the Innovation Promotion Team at Mirae Asset Securities and an ‘IT expert,’ as an IT executive last month. President Kim graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in Computational Statistics and has served as head of the Cyber Team at Mirae Asset Securities, vice president of the IT Business Division, and CEO of Mirae Asset Fund Service and Mirae Asset Capital.

Although the official appointment has not yet been made, President Kim is expected to oversee digital transformation efforts at Mirae Asset Life Insurance. In March, Mirae Asset Life Insurance spun off its sales organization into Mirae Asset Financial Services and is accelerating digital transformation. They have expanded the sales channels for their core product, variable insurance, to online platforms and introduced the Smart Care service, which allows variable insurance subscribers to easily manage investment information.

Shinhan Life, which will launch next month, recently strengthened its digital division through organizational restructuring. Within the Digital Innovation Group, they organized four teams responsible for planning, innovation, big data, and healthcare business, systematizing the organization. Shinhan Life plans to provide ‘all insurance services via mobile phones 24/7’ and intends to make and implement all decisions centered on digital, value, and data.

Kakao Pay, which recently received preliminary approval to establish a digital non-life insurance company, has begun hiring about 300 employees within the year. It is known that more than 100 of these hires will be IT personnel specializing in the insurance sector.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.