In recent times, the entrepreneurial world has witnessed a surge of dynamic leaders who’ve ushered a paradigm-shift in their industry. The visionary mindset and processes of these entrepreneurs have redefined prevailing business conventions to spark an innovation culture. They’ve not only inspired other entrepreneurs but also instilled within them a spirit of thought leadership.
One among such illustrious entrepreneurs is Kevin Steer, the Founder of 121 Advisor. Based in Malaysia, Kevin boasts of a global background encompassing several professional and educational experiences from different countries.
Kevin’s company specializes in providing FinTech & InsurTech solutions to the Banking, Insurance, and Takaful sectors. Thus far, it has implemented 20+ companies, and has successfully served dozens of clients in the aforesaid industries.
In this article, we’ll be covering the various aspects of Kevin’s company that’ve helped him achieve market prominence. We’re certain that these key elements will spur our readers to conquer their business goals.
A Versatile International Exposure
The idea for 121Advisor resulted from Kevin’s years of professional growth across multifarious domains. This entailed a versatile international exposure starting with his graduation from Cambridge University in 1978. Kevin then worked for a company Schlumberger (in Brunei, Australia, Indonesia, China) for 5 years. Witnessing the rapid evolution of the IT sector, in 1986, he then did a Masters in Computing at Imperial College, with a special focus on Artificial Intelligence. In 1990, he moved over to Malaysia, to implement solutions on Insurance & Banking. He was there able to get business in China, India, Thailand, & Indonesia.
Fast-forward to 2021, 121Advisor has established an unequivocal dominance in the Asia-Pacific market. Over time, Kevin has expanded its service portfolio to include multifarious Disruptive Solutions, such as Referral Management (for banks), Customer Service portals, Online Sales, Mobile Point of Sales, Predictive Analytics, FitBot for Robo Advisors multi-lingual.
121Advisor’s vastly comprehensive services are the major highlight of the brand that’ve helped it stand out among competitors.
121Advisor’s Multifaceted Services
To provide a holistic customer experience, Kevin has encompassed multiple different facets in InsurTech & FinTech services, namely:
Predictive Analytics with Machine Learning
Building Predictive Analytics Models (PAM) for Banking, Insurance & Takaful. These solutions focus on predictive marketing & sales, customer service, new business underwriting, personalization and claims management.
Multi-lingual Chatbot for Financial, Insurance & Takaful (FITbot)
Multi-lingual Robo Advisor and a chatbot that utilizes hybrid trees and natural language processing (NLP) to engage with customers to offer a more personalized customer experience and generate more referrals.
Web Portal Solution for Sales & Servicing (WebPoS)
Multi-lingual mobile responsive website and portal solution to enable clients to experience a unified personalized digital experience where content, sales, marketing, and work management are consolidated instead of siloed.
Referral Management & Marketing Automation (ReMMA)
Used for banks to effectively and efficiently auto-assign leads, tracks, and manages lead referrals and conversions based on user-defined workflows.
Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA)
Allows agents to effectively plan and manage sales activity to ensure all leads and prospects are addressed. Managers can monitor real-time to render assistance where necessary.
Community & E-worksite Marketing & Distribution (CeMD)
Community portal solution allows organizations to engage with members of their community to nurture trust and create advocates thereby improving customer retention. Recently launched the u12know knowledge portal.
Choices Online Store (COS)
Allows insurers and takaful operators to provide direct purchase of products online. Can integrate with Multi-lingual Chatbot for Financial Insurance & Takaful (FITbot) robo-advisor services as well as referrals via Referral Management & Marketing Automation (ReMMA).
Takaful & Insurance Mobility Made Simple (TIMMS)
A cross platform mobile point of sales solution allowing agents to identify client financial needs via Customer Fact Find, recommend products, make presentations, generate quotes and e-submit applications, in a regulatory compliant process.
Customer Service Portal
This is an on-demand access point enabling customer to view their insurance/takaful account, anywhere and anytime. It enables policyholders to view their policies and certificate details via a simple internet connection. The portal provides a safe avenue for customers to update their personal information, pay premium, switch funds, print documents, update beneficiary details, etc., which traditionally would take weeks to be executed due to siloed lines of business.
Enterprise Product Configurator (EPC)
Reduce the time to market for insurance and takaful products. Built to rapidly setup product rates, illustrations, validation engine as well as an automated testing module allows quick product deployment.
Multi-channel Distribution Management Solution (McDMS)
For general agencies, IFAs, brokers, Agency Leader Corporations (ALCs) to simplify operations by consolidating their diverse requirements. Its built-in performance management and compensation computation help clients improve sales with reduced administration costs.
In addition to the above services, Kevin plans to also holistically serve the lifestyle needs of customers by covering different areas of it. He is striving to achieve this through the introduction of a new platform.
u12know – Kevin’s Disruptive New Venture
As most millennials in Asia Pacific do not understand financial planning, and often max out their credit cards and get into debt; there is a need to help educate them on their lifestyle financial goals and recommend products that they can buy online. Kevin aims to fulfil this need through the launch of u12know, which is a disruptive knowledge portal offering advice on lifestyle financial & (in future) health goals. The portal will help them understand their needs and create a plan to help them build their lifestyle & business financial plans. For each country, this will be translated into the local language through its multi-lingual chatbot & Robo Advisor.
In future, Kevin plans to include health and wellness calculators in u12know to advise people on their health and what they need to work on to get healthy. This will also include a “total health score”, based on the health calculators to indicate whether they are very healthy, healthy, unhealthy or at risk.
Owing to such ingenious technologies, 121Advisor has been able to garner an impressive clientele over the years. These include umpteen national as well as internationally renowned brands.
121Advisor’s Esteemed Clientele
Through 121Advisor, Kevin has effectively provided services for the following:
- AmMetlife Takaful.
- AmMetlife conventional.
- MCIS (part of Sanlam Group).
- FWD Takaful.
- Sunlife Sunlife, and many more.
In the coming years, Kevin plans to further expand his clientèle by venturing into different international markets. He envisions some strategic expansion plans for the same.
Kevin’s Plans for the Future
Going forward, Kevin plans to bolster his company’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region. He firstly seeks to expand in the Singapore and Indonesia markets. Thereafter, he plans to expand in Europe and USA as well.
Kevin goes on to say that AI, big data, ML, chatbots, Robo Advisors & RPA will have significant impact on the FinTech & InsurTech sectors in order to fuel their growth. 121Advisor, thus, will keep promoting such disruptive AI solutions to Banks, Insurers, Takaful & Investment Companies.
On the personal front, Kevin aspires to bring a shift in the society through his philanthropic activities. He has been donating money to various charities, such as Animals Asia, Four Paws, Green Peace, etc.
As a final note, he wants to share some vital insights from eminent techies around the world. These insights, according to him, have metamorphic potential for change if harnessed by entrepreneurs.
Insights For Entrepreneurs
Given below are some famous quotes pertinent to FinTech & InsurTech shared by Kevin:
Millennials are the least insured generation since WWII … insurance companies are ripe for disruption.” Mark Dowds, Trov
“A well-executed user experience builds trust.” Tom Creighton,Wealthsimple
“True AI needs quantum computing to support [it], but ‘Augmented Intelligence’ is transforming industries today.” – Pavel Abdur-Rahman, IBM
Lastly, Kevin shares how it’s unequivocally important for entrepreneurs to be astute in risk-taking. He urges our readers to evaluate and assess the risks and only make decisions based on calculative reasoning. Entrepreneurship, as they say, is a mastery of the numbers game!
