Interview: Sasha Gainullin, Robin Assist
Oliver Cuenca interviewed Sasha Gainullin, CEO of battleface’s claims handling and assistance subsidiary Robin Assist, about his company’s first year and its future plans
How are you finding your first year as CEO of Robin Assist – particularly in contrast with your other role as CEO of battleface?
Leadership-wise, it’s been an easy launch for us. Bo Bawara, Robin’s Managing Director, and I worked together since our college days. The core team of Robin Assist consists of people that we’ve worked with over the course of our 25 years in the industry.
This year, we’re concentrating on adding additional electronic payment methods
Operating two separate companies comes with its challenges, but in the case of Robin Assist and battleface, it’s a natural fit. We built battleface using our in-house insurance expertise to design a tech-driven solution that would allow our partners and travellers to pick only the benefits they want, instead of being forced into an ‘off-the-shelf’ policy. We’re developing Robin Assist in much the same way, with a modular feature-based approach.
By leveraging our deep tech stack and our core skills in assistance and claims, we can provide our carrier and managing general agent (MGA) partners with a modular solution to their travel insurance platform needs.
It has been just over a year since battleface launched Robin Assist – how has the brand developed in that time?
Rapidly. There has been a lot of interest in the platform, and based on this interest, we’ve been leaning into the following areas since launching: tech enhancements, assistance, and claims services.
We have assembled a global team of highly experienced coordinators and medical advisers who know this space very well, and they themselves are our competitive advantage. Our founding team members come from travel emergency, medical and claims management backgrounds.
One of the first pieces we built was a core rules engine that our claims journey lives within. The rules engine allows our team to trigger workflows that make processing claims more efficient for the adjusters, but, more importantly, faster, and easier for the claimant.
This year, we’re concentrating on adding additional electronic payment methods, launching relevant customer communication channels, automating certain catastrophic claims, automated subrogation, and continuing to enhance our fraudulent claims management solutions.
What are the main challenges the industry is facing at the moment?
There are several, and, as the travel industry evolves, new challenges arise. The three things we’re most focused on this year are:
- Global climate change – some of the most sought-after travel destinations are also prone to climate change risks. Strengthening hurricanes hitting the US coasts; heatwaves throughout Europe; and wildfires across Australia are just some examples. Outside of the profitability risks any one of these climate-related events exposes us to, they also pose a greater existential threat to our industry. As we saw after Covid-19, if we can’t respond quickly enough and reassure our travelling insureds they are being appropriately covered and cared for, it calls into question the value and potentially even the necessity of travel insurance. By leveraging catastrophic claim automation tools, we are working to reduce the time to service claimants and help maintain the value of the product offering
- Quickly evolving expectations from customers – we’re viewing this as more of an opportunity rather than a challenge. Staying current or even ahead of rapidly shifting consumer preferences is critical to our success. Our partners trust us with a very sensitive portion of their customers’ travel journey, and aligning with their communication preferences (i.e. WhatsApp and WeChat, specifically for international travellers), and ensuring they’re not left stranded during an assistance case or throughout the claims process, is of utmost importance. Additionally, we recognise the need for expediency in not only communications, but also with payments, which is why digital wallet, different options, and multiple currency capabilities are priorities for our team to address
- Fraud – this has risen dramatically in the insurance industry over the past few years. The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud reports that global fraud in insurance increased by 13% in 2022. This translated into more than $308 billion lost due to fraud globally. We’ve experienced that increase in both hard and soft fraud. Amongst others, we’ve seen the following scenarios play out:
- Insured purchases a policy under a fictitious or assumed identity for the express purpose of filing a claim
- Insured files a claim for a non-existing loss (e.g. reports a lost checked bag using an airline’s online lost baggage reporting tool even when they did not check in a bag, then immediately files an insurance claim for the travel inconvenience benefit)
- Insured submits a claim with falsified but very sophisticated and convincing supporting documents (fake travel documents, death certificates, receipts, medical reports, etc.; falsified positive Covid-19 documents are particularly prevalent).
Our approach to addressing these challenges has been two-pronged – both updating operating best practices and strengthening technology to support better identity verification and flagging of situations that are prone to fraud.
What new improvements to its range of services is Robin Assist looking to implement in the future?
The product road map for Robin Assist is an exciting one that has evolved based on conversations with customers and insurance carrier partners. This year’s plan includes providing new claim payment options for travellers, adding data-driven claims servicing for hurricanes, automated subrogation, and incorporating additional fraud tools into our claims platform.
When deciding on priorities, we combine our own customer experience data with insurance carrier partner needs. For example, last year we’ve worked hard on eliminating the need for customers to file a claim if an assistance case was opened. In the industry, it is common for an assistance case to be opened only to handle certain benefits like medical for processing, waiting for a claims department to pick up the rest when it comes to travel delay, trip interruption/curtailment, and/or cancellation. We believe that handling everything upfront right there and then provides a better customer experience, [and] better savings when coordinating benefits or working with travel suppliers on cancellations and refunds, negotiating for discounts with providers, and contributing to organisations’ operational efficiencies.
As a subsidiary of battleface (an insurance provider) that operates with other companies, how do you balance the needs of your parent company with those of clients?
We view battleface as a business partner of Robin Assist, using its tech platform and services – just like any other insurance carrier or MGA. Robin Assist was developed to complement and add relevant value to all travel insurance products across the globe and help increase the likelihood of travellers becoming lifelong customers.
We believe that handling everything upfront right there and then provides a better customer experience
What do you look for when forming a new business partnership?
We strongly believe in a win-win-win approach: partners, travellers, and us. This approach also extends to our provider network partners. We want to partner with companies with philosophical similarities of treating customers fairly and in good faith.
Similarly, we partner with companies that also believe in empowering teams to make decisions while managing a claim or an assistance case. Our intent with Robin Assist is to treat customers in the way that enables a lifetime value for our business partners, from the post-purchase experience they had with our team.