Olivia: Ang insurance company na hindi na-integration ready. (0:03) Mabuti, 80% nila hindi na-integration ready. Mabuti, mayroon nila mayroon na internal system na mayroon sa loob.
I’m Olivia Escartin, I’m designer by profession and at heart. I’m an ethical design thinking. The business and soulutions that we build is always about solving particular problems.
Olivia: OSEAS ay a technology, AI-enabled platform that is meant to augment the process between the insurance companies, insurance agencies and brokerage and their customers. That makes smarter matching of products.
Philippe: These are our pain points. We need to find technology that could solve these problems.
Olivia: Their pain points are usually, they have to juggle around three to four different platforms.One is their billing system.Then the number two is the CRM component.
Philippe: Majority of Filipinos sees insurance as literally a premium.
Olivia: Imagine if everyone can be interconnected. Now they can serve more Filipinos, right? And if they can serve more Filipinos, our insurance products will be cheaper.
Philippe: I’m looking at this. It says, Founder Institute Philippines. What is this? Tell us about this.
Olivia: Well, Founder Institute Philippines is close to my heart. There’s actually a background to it. It’s a startup program backed by Silicon Valley. So, across different parts of the world, there are Founder Institute offices.
So, I just graduated last December from Founder Institute Philippines. So, it was a grueling accelerator program, but it’s a no BS kind of system. They don’t babysit you. They don’t baby talk you. Because at the end of the cohort, the real goal is to establish a sound and sustainable scalable business. And each of us, we have different tracks.
Olivia: Some are just ideas. Some are already validation. I took the track of traction because I already have existing clients. So, yeah. I’m proud and happy to it. And the reason I said it’s close to my heart, I saw it 2013, 2014.
And it’s just now that I really took the leap. And I love the mentors. They’ve been very intentional. Like weekly, you pitch. Yeah. So, that’s why I brought the cup. Thankful. So happy with it. I use it because it was raining outside.
Philippe: So, what was part of your pitch when you joined Founder Institute? Was it, were you promoting your business? Were you bringing in your business for funding? What was the whole process about this?
Olivia: They have a screening of an entrepreneurial DNA. So, there are four types of people that they actually took in. I believe if my numbers were right, from 70 applicants, they just took in around 20 and only nine or eight of us graduated, something like that.
So, I pitched for OSEAS, our insurance tech startup. The reason behind it is I really wanted to get the guidance and a no BS, unfiltered mentorship. And because all of, I would say all of their mentors and pool of, I couldn’t say really consultants, but the pool of mentors inside are not just from the Philippines.
Olivia: You have access globally; if you want to book an office hour, we call it office hours, it’s a mentorship call. You get calls from someone from the US or any industry, you pick and choose as long as they’re available.
And that’s what I needed. I needed our company to have the best experience and I needed another fresh perspective. And I said, you know, they also understood what we were doin that’s the key.
Olivia: Now, there are many programs around, but so far when I spoke to them, they understood, and they said, yeah, you just take the DNA test and see if you are able to get in. I was so happy when I got the result.
Philippe: So, congratulations, because it seems that you graduated on that. And maybe can you tell us more about OSEAS?
Olivia: Sure
Philippe: What is it all about? And you mentioned the term insurance. So, enlighten us about what your startup is all about.
Olivia: To give you the backstory behind OSEAS, we co-founded it—me and my sister. Both of us are passionate about insurance; however, we have two different types of journeys that we encountered.
My journey personally was when I was working on the ship, and we had a near accident. We almost sank. We were tilted. I seldom talk about it, but that was the first moment I realized that, if you don’t have cell phones were not really much of a use back then in the early 2000s you have that split second of praying to God and saying,
Olivia: “Lord, I don’t know if I’m going to see my family, but tell them I love them.” Really, that’s the only thing you can do. For crew members, you’re not placed in a section of the ship that you can easily go out; it’s meant for passengers.
I was working in an office, all steel, so I had to go upstairs anyway. That was my close experience with insurance. I heard a lot about insurance when I was an OFW. They count their fingers that’s the cost, that’s how much they’re going to take. On the Philippine side, my sister and I were also into insurance.
Olivia: We’re both life insurance advisors. We took those exams. Our closest story for that is during our trade show events. We do events management, and my sister is really very good at that, tourism-related.
They would sell thousands of airline tickets in two or three days, but the travel insurance documents were piling up. It would take one or two weeks to process, but the tickets were already sold. We saw that as an opportunity to solve, and that’s how it started. The OSEAS name, though, we borrowed from our dad.
Olivia: That’s actually our father’s name, and we found out that the meaning of his name is salvation. It’s actually a Hebrew word. I realized his name was biblical also. OSEAS means salvation.
We were running out of names to use starting with the letter O, so we decided to go with OSEAS. It sounds nice, unique, and close to our heart. Of course, when we pitch, we focus on the purpose, not about whose name it was.
Philippe: But it’s an awesome name.
Olivia: Thank you.
Philippe: Not only that it means great, but it’s, like you said, it’s unique.
Olivia: Yes.
Philippe: I think this is the first time I heard of a name, Osea’s.
Olivia: Yeah.
Philippe: And it’s your father’s name. What a great name.
Olivia: Yes.
Philippe: Let’s rewind back to insurance. Is your startup mainly focused on travel insurance, or is it a combination with life insurance? Give us a little more context about what insurance policies you provide.
Olivia: First of all, OSEAS does not sell insurance products. We are a tech platform. In the Philippines, legally, we cannot call it an insurtech, but abroad it’s considered insurtech. OSEAS is a technology, AI-enabled platform meant to augment the process between insurance companies, insurance agencies, brokerages, and their customers.
It’s an all-in-one platform that enables smarter matching of products with clients, so what would normally take seven days for a quotation process can take just under five minutes.
Olivia: To others, we often describe it as a combination of CRM and ERP, allowing companies to manage their customers, internal processes, and business operations while staying compliant with the Insurance Commission and BIR.
Philippe: So, in your platform, is this where as a consumer, as a customer, potential customer, is it a platform where I could visit, for example, on a website or an app and then I could give my details and your technology spits out what’s the best match for me as an individual? Is that how it works?
Olivia: Okay. So, our platform, basically, it’s B2B. It will allow our existing customers as the insurance companies and brokerages to have that kind of experience for their customers. So, for example, let’s make an example of an insurance agency, insurance agency A, B, and C.
So, OSEAS can provide any technology for insurance A, B, and C. Why? Because insurance agency A may be specializing in HMOs, but they don’t want to deal with other life insurance products. It’s okay.
Olivia: They can still use our platform. Insurance agency B may be into car insurance. They’re all about TTPL, because they have a lot of LTO placements, you know, that area. We can still serve them.
So, our platform is very flexible. We can serve any insurance-related businesses. So, for example, if insurance agency C is all about the health insurance mixture, we can still serve them.
Olivia: So, in our platform, any products that they have, we can onboard it there. So, yeah. That experience for the customers, we can enable that if they use our system.
Philippe: I see. So, it’s sort of making the whole process more efficient so that they could serve their customers in a faster manner.
Olivia: Yes. So, it’s an end-to-end business process and customer relationship experience.
Philippe: And is it usually the first ongoing process when, let’s say, a bunch of clients or customers sign up for insurance? Is that the only process that prolongs?
Olivia: You know, the fun part is they usually come to us because they’ve tried three or four different platforms already. Sometimes, they even tried to do it in-house first. But what usually happens is they first want to migrate their old client profiles, their archives, their existing portfolio, and then bring in the new leads or new customers.
So, that’s what usually happens in the B2B. They just want to make sure their existing information is intact, figure out how to migrate it to the new system, and then serve the new clients.
Philippe: For other insurance companies out there that want to avail your technology, can you tell us what is usually the pain points or give me like a bunch of pain points for companies,
for insurance companies that say, okay, these are our pain points. We need to find technology that could solve these problems. What are usually those pain points?
Olivia: Their pain points are usually that they have to juggle three to four different platforms to operate their whole business. One is their billing system. They sometimes have to subscribe to expensive platforms and then train their people again to use another system just to reconcile their other billing.
That’s one. The second is the CRM component. Usually, for example, the common misconception is, “What if I just use HubSpot?” But those tools are meant for marketers. So, that’s a pain point. When it comes to compliance, how do you make it compliant? You’re not using an external system, but you’re going to exchange personal information.
Olivia: At least with OSEAS, everything is under one roof. It’s safe. It also saves time for operations apart from the customer. For example, a common pain point is needing to go to them to make your payment. I mean, we still, I think 80% of the transactions, go to the office or exchange papers.
With the platform, it reduces that friction. It automatically sends reminders about policies that are about to expire. The benefit is it also lessens the probability of penalties. You know they get penalized just because they fail to remind their customers.
Philippe: Okay.
Olivia: So, there’s a lot of legwork that people don’t really see behind the scenes. They think that insurance companies or insurance agencies are all about commission. No, that commission is meant for service. It’s not just for profit they’re really doing a lot.
They give recommendations. Now, the new part, AI the AI component is basically launching some modules for smart matching. Meaning, when you input your car details, it will be easier to determine what matches your profile and what kind of product can be recommended to you.
Philippe: So, you have a portal for the customers?
Olivia: Yes, which is very rare for insurance platforms. Most of those platforms are foreign, but in the Philippines, I would say we might be the first. I really think so. We might be the first doing that. All of them that has that solution are all foreign technology. From Singapore, from US, from the first world.
Philippe: From the first world. I’m very familiar with how Gcash has different, how do you call it, different modules in their app. And that one other module that they have is where they sell insurance.
Like, their number one, I think, when it comes to selling that component is, I believe, what they’re always promoting is seeing life. As a life insurance. Like right now, it just popped up, seeing life.
Philippe: They’re listening. So, is this sort of similar to what you guys are doing? Because I could go here in Gcash, they call it G-Insure. And then they kind of offer me different, what do you call this, policies? With seeing life, they have malay insurance. So this is more of the different products. The customer side.
Olivia: Yes.
Philippe: But you guys are like in the back end.
Olivia: The engine.
Philippe: You guys are the engine managing all of this.
Olivia: Yeah, so if you look at a car, we’re the engine. You can change the hood, you can have different stuff, but we’re the engine inside that it’s going to be flexible or possible for them to run those things.
In the case of Gcash, since you brought it up, it’s just a marketing platform. Most of the time, especially in the early years of the insurance platforms, there’s no direct integration. In fact, probably 90% of what you’re seeing in the marketplace does not have a direct integration with the internal process or system of the insurance companies. So technically, that’s an added legwork for them.
Philippe: But what’s kind of surprising here is I tap any of these, and since I’m already verified as a Gcash user, they could just use my existing… Well, this is on the customer side. They could just use my existing information.
No need to verify, no agents, no nothing, and simply just get one policy and voila. I’m already insured with a certain amount, like a million after this one. Actually, they have the matching thing for a month or it depends, right?
Olivia: So I’m going to give you two sides of the coin. This is fun. So first, we’re very happy Gcash has that component. Shout out to Gcash. We love you. OSEAS can also allow the insurance companies or agencies to connect to Gcash, G-Insure.
Philippe: Wow.
Olivia: Yes, so we can be the integration partner also for that, directly connecting to their system.
Philippe: Nice, nice.
Olivia: Because most of the time, most of the time, the ones that connected them are usually marketing platforms.
Philippe: True enough.
Olivia: And if I may say, the two sides of the coin so that’s the one side that I shared, which is more about the business process. On the other side, if you look at the numbers that they gave you, it makes you spend 80 pesos for one month worth of coverage. In reality, you lose there.
Philippe: Really?
Olivia: Yeah.
Philippe: How come?
Olivia: That’s why it’s more sound to make insurance decisions in a long-term manner when it comes to life. Because usually, the pain point of the Philippine industry in the insurance, we don’t read the fine prints.
Philippe: We never do.
Olivia: Exactly. They look at the premium and the general coverage.
Philippe: Yeah
Olivia: But is it going to be helpful? You paid today, but next month you didn’t, so you lose it, right? So it’s still different. If you look at the long-term numbers, it doesn’t really make sense. That’s how some insurance products are designed, especially when it comes to the mandatory or smaller ones.
Unfortunately, in the case of the Philippines, we sell them with the fine print. For example, in car insurance, there are certain policies that say that if the driver is not the assigned driver or someone not listed in the policy, you’re actually not covered.
Olivia: But people randomly lend their cars to someone, and then they cry, “Oh, there’s insurance.” You know, so… There are others, even the media, but the media cannot do anything because there’s fine print.
Philippe: So in this fine print, is it always the case, let’s say, we get the regular, what do you call it?
Olivia: So the thing is, GCash is nice that they’re promoting insurance, but what’s lacking is did you get to ask what your perks are? Did you have someone to talk to on a personal level to explain that?
No. It’s just that you have this perception that everything is covered. But the question is, sometimes when you get an insurance policy, if you haven’t, like, if you get a quotation, you’re still going to pay for it.
Olivia: Not all insurance companies have the same timeline. You’re about to pay are you already covered? Or maybe the next day? Did you pay already? There are things that always depend on the fine print of the quotation.
So it’s nice that you have someone to talk to. Hopefully, it would be better if, before you make a purchase, there were options to ask more details. Do you have any FAQs? There should have been some FAQs inside before the purchase.
Philippe: In terms of insurance, because as a customer, one of the pain points of getting insurance especially in life, especially those with bigger coverage my major pain point is the whole process.
Maybe for the majority, let me know your thoughts about this. For the majority of Filipinos who see insurance as literally a premium to purchase, for someone like me, let’s say I would pay a hundred thousand a month for a certain coverage.
Philippe: Most Filipinos can’t afford that. But something like this, something like 300 a month or 80 pesos a day, it’s a no-brainer for them. Okay, I could afford this. Because most Filipinos can’t afford the bigger coverage. And my pain point for that is the whole process.
Let’s say, when I got my insurance a few years back, there was a lot of paperwork, a lot of signing the whole process is really…
Olivia: It’s very legal.
Philippe: It’s as if I’m filing, it’s as if I’m going to court.
Olivia: Yes, exactly.
Philippe: With all the signing and the questions the health-related ones, like if you’re a smoker or at high risk I mean, the only reason, for someone like me, I would just go in there and purchase it, no questions asked.
Now, what are your thoughts about this kind of process? Is it… because like you said, Lugitay is 80 pesos per day or 80 pesos per month. Pero what are the workarounds? Because if this is not good for us, but we can’t afford the better ones, what’s the middle part?
Olivia: Okay, just to be clear, Lugi tayo dun sa 80 pesos, because my answer would be related to an overall view of what has happened in a 10-year span of the insurance tech business. Because my fear with some products is today you see them, tomorrow you don’t.
That’s the thing there have been a lot of experimental products in the insurance industry over the past decade, and we’ve seen them come and go, come and go, come and go. That is why OSEAS did not prioritize coming up with a product that’s highly customized to us, because that’s what happened with travel insurance.
Olivia: Our first platform was supposed to be a travel insurance platform for travel agencies. It was supposed to be a sweet spot thousands of agencies, imagine thousands of agencies using the portal every day to book. Then the pandemic happened, and we realized, oh, that is not good.
We were too dependent on a particular product. Some insurance technology platforms from abroad are okay for example, the ones from Singapore or Canada because they grew up in different countries and were able to sustain that technology and pipeline. But here, we’re hyper-localized, meaning we’re solving a very localized problem.
Olivia: Our vision through OSEAS is not to say they don’t need anything else. No. We can be used however they want as their middleware, their core, or whatever they need so that they can be integrated with GCash.
They may want to be integrated with, for example, one of their common pain points: they have leads from social media how are they going to manage that? We can offer recommendations for a better workflow, some kind of middle integration, or something else that helps them manage their marketing.
Olivia: So it’s not just about finance and operations it can also be used by the marketing department. Usually, OSEAS is being used by almost all departments. That’s basically a picturesque point of view of how OSEAS is beneficial to insurance.
Philippe: So, you would categorize your business as insurance tech or insure tech? How does that work?
Olivia: Yeah.
Philippe: Can we describe it as like ERP system for the insurance?
Olivia: We would say we’re an insurance, AI-enabled insurance technology platform. And we just use the word technology in a whole so that we’re not confused with insure tech locally because I believe there’s some compliance to that.
It is also due to the fault of, you know, in the Philippines when there’s something new, people just build without really putting some compliance to it. Unfortunately, due to that matter, insurance commission had to put up some regulations.
Olivia: It becomes tight. It became tighter. Like for example, in the early years, there were so many things that would allow you to make some comparison of insurance products. They don’t like that because it’s not really true.
Philippe: Are we talking about the commissions or the companies?
Olivia: To be clear, when you see a comparative platform of insurance products, I would say 90%. I’m sure it’s not true. It’s going to give you a wrong perception that what you’re seeing is actual numbers.
Even if they put a disclaimer, “this is only indicative,” people don’t really read that. At the end of the day, you’re still going to get a quotation. They just took your marketing data. You’re a lead. You’re the product.
Olivia: Because of that, the Insurance Commission became more rigid or put up some regulations on that. That’s why we’re away from comparative. We don’t do marketplace. It’s always about the insurance company or the agency per se. Whenever you see a comparative site, it’s a marketing site. It’s not an insurance site.
Philippe: But it’s still perfectly legal because that’s what GCash is doing with G-Insure.
Olivia: With G-Insure, the difference with G-Insure, if you’ve seen that to comply with regulations, they give you a different module so there’s a different experience.
You are not comparing it per product. What I mean is you didn’t input data and make comparative rates.
Philippe: They’re just offering whatever is available.
Olivia: That is off the shelf. We call it off the shelf. That’s normal. That’s super legal. We can have that facility also for an insurance agency. For example, if you own an insurance agency and you say, Olive, we can carry Malayan, Stronghold, and others I think they already merged with Mercantile. We carry seven non-life products.
I want my insurance agency to have something like GCash. It’s okay because legally, you’re an insurance agency. Your website can have that off the shelf thing or lead form. OSEAS has that for you.
Philippe: Makes a lot of sense.
Olivia: Our goal is to make it affordable and economical for insurance-related businesses to afford systems because usually, it’s so expensive to have a system. It’s subscription-based. It’s not developmental kind of traditional development.
Philippe: So the system exists already?
Olivia: Yes. It’s a software as a service, SaaS.
Philippe: Okay, so SaaS. That’s a business model then. And I’m sure there’s different tiers, depending if they want the whole ERP system or just…
Olivia: They usually have the whole because they cannot operate without one department from another. That’s why we had to really build it first before going to the market. And like other startups, they test it, like create this module, test the market.
No, no, you cannot do that. We really had to start from an end-to-end that’s existing. And then we just customize a few of their workflows per module. Maybe they’re outing, want to have a different process.
Olivia: They have to go to another step. There’s a little bit of customization. But all in all, they have a core system.
Philippe: So what you’re offering is the whole ecosystem?
Olivia: Yes. End-to-end 360.
Philippe: Which is pretty good because it’s hard to have different systems that are not integrable.
Olivia: Yes. And then they don’t have to count how many users. The tendency for software and people when software is set so you can only use a certain number of users the tendency is not to comply.
The tendency is, “Can we just share email?” So there’s also a behavior to it. And we don’t want that. We want to promote. Our goal is, we’re looking at the bigger picture for OSEAS. The problem in the Philippines is that only 2% are self-insured, meaning we have the initiative to insure ourselves; 98% are not.
Olivia: So that’s scary. If you look at the cars out there, probably 70% don’t have insurance only the mandatory because it’s part of the LTO. So anything that happens, we have to wait for the police. But if we have that technology and everyone already has a seamless experience, that will be reduced.
If something happens, maybe their dash cam has captured it, and we can have it uploaded to the system so their clients will be faster. Making it more affordable also makes the companies adapt faster.
Olivia: And that pain point, of course, the customers don’t see. They think it’s all about, you know, being ripped off. No the insurance companies are doing a lot of jobs.
Philippe: When we talk about insurance companies, aren’t there just a few? Because how much you need to put up an insurance company?Like in terms of, I think you need a billion pesos.
Olivia: Yeah, actually, right now, there used to be a lot of insurance companies, but in the past five years, they’ve greatly reduced. They started having some merchant acquisitions. So I think there’s new data from the Insurance Commission that you need at least 3 billion capitalization.
Philippe: Pesos or dollars?
Olivia: Pesos. Yeah, so there’s a percentage to it that you have to have as actual cash. And that is tough for insurance companies. They always have to have that. So there are probably just around 60 plus insurance companies, including life and non-life.
Then there’s also HMO. And the majority in life insurance are foreign, but the local ones are usually dominated by local insurance companies. If you look at the demographics, the majority of local insurance companies also have banks.
Olivia: So you’re seeing some relationship with Israeli FinTech. In the outside world, they’re called FinTech. It’s not really always about insurance. It’s financial.
Philippe: I have a question that’s a little out of context, but probably related. Have you guys ever thought of introducing this to PhilHealth?
Olivia: No, but we are familiar with the PhilHealth.
Philippe: Aren’t we all?
Olivia: We’re familiar with PhilHealth. Just to give a background also, our first tech startup encounter was with people who were actually very, very, very motivated in electronic medical records.
In the early years, we saw that usually if it was going to be related to DOH and PhilHealth, it was like hitting a wall. And that’s not good for business. At least with insurance, you’re dealing with the private sector.
Olivia: But once you put your eggs to be dependent on the government, it should be complementary. To be dependent, it’s going to be tough. But we are familiar with PhilHealth. It’s always a wish of people. At first, they thought our insurance mantra was all about universal health care.
We said, no, we’re just enabling insurance companies to do whatever they want. We solve their tech problem. But the bigger picture there is, imagine if everyone can be interconnected. Now they can serve more Filipinos, right?
Philippe: Sure.
Olivia: And if they can serve more Filipinos, our insurance products will be cheaper. That’s why it’s expensive, because we have a limited pool of number of people. But if our number or our data is as big as PhilHealth, then our insurance products would be cheaper.
Philippe: Isn’t the pain point, especially this is always a complaint for hospitals, who is, I believe, majority of hospitals accommodate PhilHealth? Majority?
Olivia: Majority, yeah.
Philippe: And wasn’t their pain point, which is always that PhilHealth is not paying them on time.
Olivia: Exactly.
Philippe: And all the delays. Don’t they need your system to actually solve that pain point?
Olivia: The problem is not the tech. In reality, the problem is the people. I see. So, for example, just to be clear, what do I mean by that? I learned this along the way. It wasn’t clear also when we were just starting. In our case, our type of customers are the ones who are ready to change.
If the organization is not ready to change or adapt, then they’re not the right fit. And it’s the same with the government. For example, in E-Gov, when DICT was ready, they were the ones pushing the envelope. Maybe anyone who would like to use us, we’re open doors. We even have a little bit just to give some background we have other ventures also.
Olivia: We have a mental screening app. We have that kind of thing that we work with doctors. And yeah, we hear a lot also related to PhilHealth. But we’re solving the problems that we can solve within our control. All of them are actually related to insurance, and then we’ve got health.
The workplace has been a common issue; it seems that there’s a higher prevalence of mental health situations. Recently, we had a lot of news, even students not being able to cope. And that’s also not good for insurance because insurance doesn’t like too much risk, right? You cannot have a suicide insurance. I mean, that’s like insane.
Philippe: They don’t cover it, right?
Olivia: Yeah. I mean, if they see any signs that they since you mentioned they have a coverage wherein they don’t automatically award the benefit. If there’s some doubt, they probably call it a suicide clause, right? And that’s why, this is an internal discussion.
Some of our peers also don’t like that GCash is promoting that. Because if you have been telling your husband and wife that, “Hey, you know, I actually have an 80 peso insurance,” like what happened to me today, I have 79,000.
Olivia: Then probably someone… because that really happens. And we can’t really blame. That’s why this is where the bigger vision of OSEAS wanted to come in not just a platform that develops, not just a technology but eventually to be in a place where we can be part of building awareness, behavior change, and re-education about insurance.
Because if we act less risky, if we act more careful, more nuanced, then it would be a safer place. I don’t have that data or statistics, but maybe you can see some correlation between people who have insurance being actually more careful rather than those who don’t. They’re more reckless.
Olivia: But we need that data. I don’t have that data. Somehow, there’s a relation to that. And it’s because, at the end of the day, insurance for life is protection. It’s never about investment. For example, with HR folks, the common issue is whenever they onboard employees, they would promote and say, “Oh, these are your benefits.”
No, those are not benefits. Those are protection not in case they need something. But they’re not meant to be utilized. Or else the company is going to pay much more because it’s meant for protection. It’s like legal protection. That’s what insurance is. You don’t have to spend that much for it, right?
Philippe: And I think people get the misconception. There’s a misconception about insurance because a lot of the so-called financial advisors sell it as an investment. They don’t sell it as protection.
That’s why there’s a big misconception about what insurance is maybe it’s the training, or maybe it’s how they promote it. There’s a ton of financial so-called advisors out there who say, “Get insurance. It’s an investment.”
Philippe: They don’t sell it as protection. And maybe it’s because Filipino people are not really convinced about how the whole scheme of the insurance world works. For example, in terms of someone having an HMO, the whole process is just tedious.
Olivia: It’s like they’re saying, just don’t get this anymore.
Philippe: Exactly. I mean, there’s so much what do you call it? there’s a lot of friction. Yeah, there’s a lot of friction all throughout the way. It’s like, why should I invest in insurance?
It’s wrong. It’s like, why can’t someone who wants to buy insurance… I mean, why sell it in a way where they have to invest in it?
Olivia: Yeah, I prefer the insurance advisors that would usually instead come up or use actual stories. I prefer that kind of selling because it’s all about use cases. Like, for example, for health insurance, not the HMO, there’s another health insurance, the medical insurance, right?
Philippe: Right.
Olivia: So a lot of people cannot afford that. But once you can afford that, that became very much useful during the COVID pandemic. So the rich people actually got covered. Their 5 million bills were actually paid for by the medical insurance, but they just paid 40, 80,000 a year.
They saved more, right? So that is a better framing of what insurance is really meant for. Medicare and MaxiCare is really doing a great job with a great experience for people. People are like, I wish my employer has MaxiCare.
Olivia: I wish my employer has this. So they’re becoming more nuanced about that. However, relating to what you were saying, it boils down to two things, but this one’s probably going to hurt: education and family, the environment that we’ve been in. So that’s why I really want and wish the Philippines to be back in the game of being better in education.
I think we’ve slipped down recently. I was surprised. I didn’t review the stats, but they said we’re no longer at the 90% educational rate. We slipped down, and that’s bad because in reality, it relates to our workplace, our mindset. I think it’s a mindset, and it goes back to insurance. And why am I saying about insurance?
Olivia:Even in tech, whenever there’s like 10 Filipino people who learn about building systems, what’s the first thing that they do? How many percent try to scam people, making fake platforms, right? There’s always this tendency. It’s very high. We’re even high in scamming, and I really don’t like the experience that even your fellow Filipino, you’re going to scam your e-commerce platform, and that’s why we have a hard time having our credit card facilities approved in the e-commerce system because we have a high scam rate, fraudulent rate.
Olivia: But we are also the BPOs, the people behind the investigation, right? They hire us to do investigations for fraud. Isn’t it ironic? I work with BPOs also, and we get some departments that are actually checking if it’s a fraudulent check. So I don’t know with us Filipinos, we’re very great talents, but we always have a mix of on the left and on the right.
Philippe: We’re so good at it. It starts even with our government. They’ve been scamming our people for such a long time.
Olivia: Yeah, yeah.
Philippe: You mentioned mindset. In the U.S., insurance is a very common thing, and they’re very comfortable with the term insurance. In the Philippines, we’re very allergic to the term insurance. What were the two different mindsets that set us apart?
Olivia: Government. They made it mandatory, so it became embedded in their culture. However, I don’t have any direct experience with American insurance. I’ve just seen a lot. In the U.S., that’s why we say insurance is a first world thing, actually.
All of their insurance products are digitally migrated because it’s mandatory. And if you see the government push in the Philippines, you won’t see insurance commission as part of the list of enhancement, right? Because it’s hard to touch since they’re majority family-owned businesses.
Philippe: I see.
Olivia: I mean, if you look at it, other agencies are easier to touch because it’s a bigger market, right? For example, cars, automotive, transport, logistics. But when it comes to insurance, these are just very few businesses.
But they’re very delicate because most of them are also in the banking sector. And if you touch insurance, you will be forced to comply with everything. So it’s not about the companies in there, but it’s about the mindset of the government.
Olivia: Because if you really want to be transparent, you would have to support the insurance industry also. For example, as an OFW, we have what we call… Have you ever watched the local programs in the past that people would…
That was very old. Ray Langit, right? People would call DZRH and they would say, I have my husband in the Middle East. Because it’s hard to call in long distance satellite call. They support people so they get a free call.
Olivia: And to us, what we know is OFWs require funds for repatriation, right? Our government spends on that. But not everyone knows that there’s actually an OFW insurance, that not everyone is complying.
Philippe: Wow. Tell us more about it.
Olivia: This was established way back before during the time of POA, Mr. Ople. I don’t remember the full details of the years. But we were surprised because we were advocate…
I mean, as insurance, we were researching on this. Then we found out, oh, there’s OFW insurance. And I was thinking about myself, like I was a seafarer. What insurance did I have?
Philippe: You weren’t aware.
Olivia: Exactly
Philippe: Is it still… I mean, does our OFW insurance still exist?
Olivia: This is the fun part. If you came from a licensed agency, manpower agency, there’s a mandatory OFW insurance. Probably we didn’t see it because we’re all about, oh, do I have a plane ticket? And you don’t look at the fine prints. So usually there is.
When you came from the Philippines, it’s compliance. It’s mandatory. But the amazing part of the law is, in insurance, is that, for example, the first year I left, I went to Qatar, probably Doha. I went there and I have an insurance policy as an OFW for one year because I was able to sign the papers in the Philippines.
Olivia: But the second year that I’m going to be renewed, we don’t have a law that allows a person outside Philippines to sign an insurance policy outside the Philippines. So the second year they’re there, they don’t have that coverage anymore. But there is supposed to be.
Now, what happens there is that the government spends a lot because they have to use repatriation funds, but it should have been covered from the beginning. So this is my personal point of view, also being an OFW, that we have insurance.
Olivia: So why is the government always raising funds if only we were always covered from the beginning? That one I haven’t really dug deep, but yeah.
Philippe: It sounds to me it’s like a loophole.
Olivia: They created a lot of departments for the OFW and that’s why just like relating to what the Argentinean president did, right? There’s too much government agencies.
Philippe: It’s true. It’s true. Because there’s a task force for everything. But that’s interesting. In OFW insurance, maybe a majority. I mean, I wasn’t even aware of that.
Olivia: For example, I saw a news a while ago, yesterday, that says OFWs, when they have a contract, when they arrive there, it shouldn’t be changed or whatnot. They should have the existing contract availed there, right?
In my experience, it didn’t happen because I worked with a different agency. Not the best one. But when I arrived there, I was like, oh, this is not what I’m going to get. There’s another contract, ask me to sign it.
Olivia: What can you do? Would you like to leave the ship and go home? You can’t. You just have to sign a new contract. Oh, okay. I just had to accept it. It was a few, almost $1,000 less. Ouch.
Philippe: Question. Okay. When OFW insurance was given to you, and you read the fine print, what was the coverage? I’m very curious.
Olivia: There’s a thing. I never saw one. I just knew when I was researching ASAD, when we were doing OSEAS. We were researching about that because we thought there wasn’t an insurance for OFWs.
Philippe: I’m quite curious because of the coverage. I’m just hoping it’s not minimum coverage. I’m hoping it’s like a minimum.
Olivia: Usually it’s, okay. The intention of that insurance was the coverage related to the job. And the bigger part is the repatriation if they have to go home. The certain conditions, I don’t remember.
But the highlight is you really cannot afford to go home, right? Usually you need to raise funds. But as long as you are within the contract of that employer, you will be able to go home. If the Filipinos knew that, they wouldn’t be jumping from one employer to another, right?
Philippe: It’s a different topic on that.
Olivia: Just an example. Education is very important. I’m not saying you have to be a graduate, but at least being able to read and comprehend these things.
Philippe: That’s the problem. Even if we’re well-educated, we don’t even read the fine print.
Olivia: We seem to be just very good in pronouncing English. But recently, we had that feedback. We saw that, right? The comprehension thing. It’s like, yeah, I’m smiling.
Philippe: Let’s jump back to your technology. What’s the future of OSEAS?
Olivia: The future of ASEAS is that it will be a powerhouse. A powerhouse of insurance engine that it will have even actuaries. They have actual engine in the future because that’s what’s going to bring down the cost of insurance. That’s what we don’t have, the data in the Philippines.
We may have a few actuaries here, but it’s not shared. It’s usually highly proprietary. Then on the AI enhancement is that ASEAS is going to have access to marketplaces in the future to allow our existing companies or any companies’ insurance that would like to tap into the ecosystem of e-wallets because the market, still a lot of Filipinos are unbankable.
Olivia: On that part, our goal is we will see the numbers that at least 1% each year or half percent each year, we will see that increase through the help of our partners. Right now, we focus on the cars and the motor vehicles because it seems to be in the Philippines, we would insure cars more than the people.
For this year, that’s our goal. We will be having the end-to-end CTPL insurance, buying, matching, and finding claims to be easier and even the renewal would be easier if you need, through the help of our partners, also probably help with the services on registering their vehicles. In the following years, we will be focusing on our actual engines.
Olivia: What do we mean by actual engines? Meaning, we’ll just have better data of being able to help our clients come up with products faster. If people are wondering why it takes a long time for us to create an insurance products, it’s actually, that’s what’s lacking.
It’s not just a simple platform. So, we have to build on that R&D. Salesforce is probably the only Filipino premier insurance technology platform in the Philippines that serves everyone end-to-end.
Philippe: Very nice. Amazing company. It’s a first. It’s a first that I’ve heard about here locally. So, it’s kind of amazing what you guys are doing. Because of you guys, hopefully, we can envision a better, like you said, insurance is a first world thing.
So, if you guys can improve our insurance situation here and make it easier for other insurance companies to jump in into your tech and make it easier on them, remove their pain points and hoping they could come up with better products that the people can afford.
Olivia: We’re looking forward to that. In fact, we’re very glad with our existing clients and partners that they have the same vision. And we’re going, we have our goal and roadmap, but at the same time, we’re also going with their flow, which is in line with our vision.
So, we’re looking forward that eventually we’ll be serving, we’re serving nationwide. The platforms that we have, usually they have branches across the Philippines. So, we’re looking forward that sooner or later, probably third quarter, some of our platform will be used also somewhere in some LGs. Yeah. So, it’s B2B, but…
Philippe: Hopefully, B2G.
Olivia: B2B2G. We won’t be directly connected to the government because the government is not selling insurance. But if they need any systems to connect to insurance companies, that will be…
Philippe: The magic word.
Olivia: Yes.
Philippe: Connect to insurance.
Olivia: We can connect. And in fact, OCS is not just building, we have a lot of communities and partners that are also looking for insurance products. So, we’re excited that eventually, for example, we have some partners that are into cooperatives.
They’re looking for products for virtual assistants, right? There are many agencies. So, they’ve been window shopping with different insurance products. But at the end of the day, it’s always a learning experience.
Olivia: They might want one product today, tomorrow, different. But with OCS, at least we will eventually have insurance partners that were using our system, like using our system. Now, when they’re ready, we can offer it to the agencies or virtual businesses that, hey, guys, you can manage your insurance through our partners. But they’re using our technology. So, it’s more of that kind of service.
Philippe: If there are people trying to come up with newer products, you guys are providing the tools.
Olivia: Yes, yes. We can help them with that. So, that’s what actually inspires our existing clients. Now, they’re inspired to come up with products. And now, they don’t have to worry about the tech.
They just have to focus on their business and everything that they want to connect, connect here, connect there. Yeah, okay. We just have to define the timeline. Because not, you know, a lot of insurance companies are not yet integration ready.
Olivia: Yeah, probably 80% of them are not ready. Usually, they just have their own internal system scattered around. But the readiness, maybe it will happen. That’s why we were thankful about COVID in that manner.
Of course, we are all affected by COVID. We were supposed to have that travel insurance portal. But because of COVID, the government had some policies that eventually allowed some insurance products to have some digital signature.
Olivia: They kind of like adapted some products. They can have some virtual meetings and just have a Zoom screenshot and sign. They have that kind of adjustments. If not for COVID, the insurance companies will not be ready yet to adapt today.
Philippe: Thank you for all the insights.
