UNION ASSURANCE
Q: As digitalisation accelerates across the sector, what will differentiate insurers that succeed from those that fall behind?
Rumesh Modarage (RM): The next generation of insurance leaders won’t be defined by how much technology they deploy but how deeply they redesign their business around the customer.
This philosophy has enabled us to transform underwriting from a process measured in days into one completed within minutes while increasing straight through processing across the business. These initiatives were never technology projects but customer experience projects.
The insurers who fall behind will be the ones who measure progress by what they have digitised rather than what they’ve made effortless for the customer.
Q: Since this award recognises customer experience, how do you define an exceptional one?
RM: Exceptional customer experience is the outcome of each decision made across every department, which is why we implemented the Net Promoter Score (NPS) framework enterprise wide. It is anchored in function by function customer journey mapping and not as a reporting exercise.
It’s a continuous improvement mechanism that holds every team accountable to the experience its work actually produces. This recognition from research and advisory firm Celent validates the work our teams have put into making that experience seamless.
Q: How do you see evolving customer expectations and how is your company gearing up?
RM: Artificial intelligence will shift insurance from reactive protection to proactive guidance, helping customers make better financial and health decisions before claims arise.
However, the future of insurance isn’t digital versus human. It’s digital where customers value speed and human where they value reassurance. The winners will be the insurers who know the difference. That’s why we continue strengthening our data and MarTech capabilities alongside global reinsurance partnerships – Munich Re, Hannover Re and PartnerRe – so our risk architecture and customer engagement evolve together, not in isolation.
Beyond awards, leadership is measured by the trust you create, the people you develop and the legacy you leave behind. That’s the standard towards which we’re building Union Assurance.
Q: Union Assurance is the only Sri Lankan insurer to receive the Celent Model Insurer Award twice. What does this achievement mean?
Harsha Senanayake (HS): Union Assurance’s two Celent recognitions on the global stage, five years apart, say more than either one alone. They point to a sustained strategy, not a single project: a clear digital vision, pursued without interruption, which is what sets an insurer apart.
Our transformation has been a decade long journey. What customers know today as Clicklife began years earlier as a digital engagement platform and evolved step by step into Sri Lanka’s first life insurance super app. It was the first to let customers purchase a policy directly from their phones.
Along the way we rebuilt our core insurance system, which Celent recognised in New York in 2020 for legacy and ecosystem transformation, at a time when many established insurers here and abroad remained tied to ageing platforms.
This year’s recognition for customer experience transformation through the Connected Life Initiative, delivered on Clicklife by integrating digital medical records and health linked wellness rewards such as our Pay as You Live challenge into a single journey, is the next chapter of that same story.
One award was for modernising the foundations; the other is for what we have built on them for the customer. To earn the Celent Model Insurer Award twice and to be the only Sri Lankan insurer to do so affirms a long-term strategy rather than a single accomplishment. It sets the digital benchmark for life insurance in the region and is a standard we fully intend to keep raising.
Q: How do you balance digital innovation with the need for personalised human interaction?
HS: The common error is to treat automation and human contact as opposing forces, to digitalise to cut cost and hope customers adjust. We built for the opposite outcome.
A customer can complete almost everything on Clicklife within minutes; but the moment they prefer a person, Clicklife Advisor brings a qualified agent directly into that same digital journey, rather than diverting them to a branch or a call centre.
The technology does not displace the human element; it relocates it to where it carries the most value – the difficult conversation, the sensitive claim and the decision that demands empathy. Empathy cannot be automated, and we have never sought it to be so.
Q: What technological opportunities and challenges face the sector over the next five years?
HS: The defining opportunity is agentic AI, capable of executing the work end-to-end on the customer’s behalf. We have already begun rebuilding core insurance functions natively on AI.
And three challenges in particular stand out. Firstly, talent: engineers capable of building these systems are scarce and internationally mobile. Next is trust: insurers must demonstrate that AI decisions are fair, explainable and auditable, particularly claims. And lastly, security and data protection: connected systems widen exposure at a time when the data protection regime is still maturing.
Address these and you will be able to justify the investment. Neglect them and no degree of sophistication will compensate.
– Compiled by Yamini Sequeira
COMPANY DETAILS
- Telephone: 1330 2990990
- Email: info@unionassurance.com
- Website: www.unionassurance.com
