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Innovation is very important in our tech-departments

Who are the faces behind Friendsurance's tech platform and innovations? Meet our IT team in a new interview series! In the second episode, we are talking with Katja Hentschel, Business Intelligence Analyst, who started at Friendsurance as a Finance Manager and developed constantly into the area of Business Intelligence.

Since when are you with Friendsurance?

I've been part of the Friendsurance family for more than 7 years. Previously I have worked for an incubator that supported Friendsurance in the areas of finance, recruiting, and marketing. When I got the chance to join Friendsurance directly I said yes straight away!

 

Where do you currently work – in the office, in home office or somewhere else?

At the moment I’m working 100% from home. Unfortunately, my office visits during the last 6 months can be counted on one hand. Especially during these times, when everyone is working from home the team feeling can get lost. But we managed to keep our team spirit at Friendsurance. Our great People & Organisation department supported us with that as well as many initiatives taken by several of our employees.

 

What is your responsibility at Friendsurance? What is the most interesting part of your job?

As Data Analyst and Controller, I contribute to the continuous improvement of every department within Friendsurance by providing, analyzing, and evaluating data – from Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, Customer Support, Product, and IT. The foundation of that is to import data from internal and external sources. The data analytics and controlling supports the individual departments as well as our Senior Management to take informed decisions as well as to control and optimize existing processes.

Since I work so closely with all departments I can say that I know almost every process. This is exactly what I love about my job and what excites me. Working together with so many different stakeholders makes my job very diverse and I always learn something new.

 

What do you like the most about working at Friendsurance?

I started at Friendsurance as Finance Manager and developed constantly into the area of Business Intelligence. Friendsurance always supported me during that process. I moved to another department, received coachings and I also have a yearly budget for my professional development. I like that we never stand still at Friendsurance and all are aiming to improve. We are open to adapt to new technologies, integrate new work methods or be the first-mover in Digital Bancassurance.

 

What fascinates you about Digital Bancassurance?

Developing own bancassurance platforms is very time-consuming and costly for banks and insurers. Instead, they cooperate with insurtech company like Friendsurance who have the technology and the digital know-how to develop and implement bancassurance solutions in a short period of time and at a reasonable cost. To see this kind of collaboration between large banks, insurers, and start-ups like Friendsurance is really exciting to me. Different work styles are coming together which allows both sides to grow further. When insurers and banks connect their IT systems and link their platforms they not only have an enormous amount of data at their disposal, they can also create a seamless omnichannel customer experience.

 

From your perspective what are the greatest strengths of Friendsurance as a tech company?

Professional trainings are a fundamental part of our company culture. We believe in innovation. Since technology is changing fast and we don’t want to miss a trend, innovation is very important in our tech-departments. Furthermore, we place importance on advanced architectures and platform approaches to provide new partners a fast and frictionless onboarding process. In addition, we simply believe in data driven products and have various products that help our customers.

 

Are you using advanced architectures in the Friendsurance tech team?

Of course! We’re using Machine Learning in the Data Team to optimize processes and bring efficiency. Also, we have developed a functionality at Friendsurance to intelligently understand and analyze bank account transactions. This allows us to react to specific events like moving apartments or the birth of a child and advise our clients with insurance products based on that. Based on the new data insights our insurance partner can offer their customers more convenient, more suitable and more affordable insurance solutions. They also have the opportunity to significantly increase the frequency of contact with their customers, becoming more relevant in their daily lives.

 

How do you prepare yourself for an AI-centric world?

I’m very excited to see what changes the use of AI brings into my professional as well as private life. Especially in the area of Data AI plays an essential role in analyzing growing amounts of data or support us with fulfilling “boring” tasks.

 

 

Learn more about the Friendsurance Tech Team! 

JOIN FRIENDSURANCE TODAY!

Being part of the Friendsurance team means thinking new every day. We are bringing two worlds together: customer centric technical innovation and the insurance business.