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HL Assurance's Kelvin Lim named Executive of the Year for Financial Services

The CEO shares his finest achievement of building a “dream team” of career-driven individuals.

CEO Kelvin Lim Choong Kiat, winner of the Executive of the Year for Financial Services at the SBR Management Excellence Awards, believes that a more balanced approach to differentiation works well instead of going head to head with other insurers on a price battle.

With the task of expanding the brand’s presence and client base as well as building a solid foundation, Kelvin first assembled a great team run by leaders with more than a decade of experience, inspiring them to think of more creative solutions to painstaking industry challenges.

Lim focused on digital distribution to drive for Hong Leong Assurance, bolstering the availability of products across all online platforms and designing more than 15 consumer and corporate insurance products from scratch to ensure the company operates with a diversified portfolio.

In an interview with Singapore Business Review, Kelvin talks about his outlook on the insurance industry, his secret to success, as well as HL Assurance’s future plans, including an income replacement solution for self-employed or freelance individuals.

Tell us more about your success as a leader of your company.

The journey in the last 4 years has been challenging but rewarding as I lead the team into a battle within the competitive insurance industry. Our success was demonstrated by the results in our portfolio of $50 million from 200,000 customers, which the team built from ground zero. Our success was led by one key element of entrepreneurial spirit. It is this spirit that cultivated passion within my team to serve our customers. It is also this spirit that positively influenced us to think out of the box, to innovate and to differentiate our products and services.

In addition to year-on-year growth results, the other success is to see every employee within my team growing in their career. Employee engagement is a big part of my focus because it is the team that will bring the success and drive the company to the next level. It is important to me that everyone on my team has a clear objective throughout the financial year. Once the objective is established, the responsibility of my senior leaders and myself is to guide our team members to achieving these goals.

Can you share with us the company’s future plans?

We’d like to continue to innovate and design products that has high affinity to specific segments of customers. With digital evolution creating jobs for self-employed or freelance individuals (e.g., private hire and food delivery personnel), we know they have been underserved and may not enjoy the same employee benefits compared to an employee in a multinational company. We hope to be able to create an income replacement solution that will aggregate these individuals into a specific group where they can benefit from insurance protection.

Another long-term goal for me and my company is to continue to develop young talents within the insurance industry. Although insurance may not be a natural first choice industry for many new tertiary graduates, I’d like to be able to do my part to influence a change. From the outside, the insurance industry may not look like a lucrative one. After being in it for more than 15 years, it is in fact an industry that can provide many young individuals with a platform to establish a remarkable career. Within our company, we are not afraid to present opportunities to young individuals who have demonstrated positive attitude and good potential. We hope to create a culture within the company that will attract potential young talents through the many successful examples from the team.

What does it mean to you to win in the Management Excellence Awards? 

The Management Excellence Award is a confirmation for us that the company is steering towards the right direction, and we are delighted to be a recipient of three awards this year. It is also an endorsement to the dedication and commitment from everyone in the organization.

Since joining HL Assurance Pte Ltd in 2015, what were the challenges you encountered and how did you overcome them? What are some of the accomplishments that you are most proud of?

Leading an insurance company in a developed market like Singapore is one of the biggest challenges in my career. We had limited options in the journey towards establishing our brand and services in the market. We could either take the option to compete on product pricing or focus on providing a differentiated value to our customers. With the latter, we have successfully included a high-affinity, high-touch proposition in every one of our products and it has proven to be the X-factor behind our rapid growth and well received by our customers.

My greatest achievement so far in insurance is to be able to assemble a “dream team” of high potential individuals who have been with the company for more than 5 years. It is always a personal achievement when I get to see the acceleration in the career of my team members. It is heartwarming to see them developing themselves into mature individuals within and outside of work. People management is one of the toughest parts of my day-to-day operations. Until today, it still brightens my day when I get an inbound email or call from any individual who has heard good comments about our company and expresses an interest in being part of the team.

What’s unique about your team and how do you foster an innovative culture?

The answer to this has to be the entrepreneurial spirit that is led by the Hong Leong Group. Personally, I have been trained to adopt this self-motivated behaviour and it drives me to constantly improving every aspect of the business. This DNA has also inevitably influenced my team members to refine their attitude towards their day to day operations and it drives an innovative culture – a culture that wants to do more in a different way. Through my experience, this is a culture that cannot be honed overnight and it has to be triggered from the top.

Can you share with us HL Assurance’s outlook on the industry as well as the strategic focus of the company next year?

We forecast that the degree of digitisation within the insurance industry will accelerate exponentially in the next 5 years. Digitisation is not just about acquisition but it is an element that must be included in every aspect of the business operations. If executed with the right formula, it will increase productivity and reduce cost substantially. For example, our customers can count on us to develop a smart claims process that incorporates digital intelligence with the objective of reducing claims processing time in 2020. At HL Assurance, we will continue to focus on developing advanced technologies that will bring convenience to our customers and distribution network. Digitisation will continue to form a key pillar of the company.

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