Martin Švec (Simplea): Saying the customer comes first is an insurance industry buzzword

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Martin Švec, CEO of Simplea, an insurance company in the Partners group. He has led it since it was founded in 2019. He was given the freedom to build a company that puts the customer first, and he admits that’s a buzzword. That’s why, at the start, he told advisers that these were only promises for now, and that in five or ten years they would see whether the company had kept them.

At the corporate insurers where he used to work, he says, the customer came fourth or fifth. Reporting, numbers and the chase for new business came first, leaving little time to improve processes and products. That’s why Simplea automatically moves all its clients to new, better policy terms, regardless of when they signed their contract. Švec says others don’t do this because it would reduce margins in the short term. “The average lifespan of a life insurance manager is shorter than the lifespan of the policy,” he says. So managers think short-term and can’t convince shareholders. He tells his own colleagues to replace him once they find he’s holding the company back rather than moving it forward.

He sees a big difference in speed. Things that took half a year of battles and hundreds of hours of preparation in a corporation can be settled in an afternoon at Simplea. Policy terms are one example. Standard documentation consists of several documents full of cross-references and exclusions that ordinary consumers can’t follow. Simplea scrapped it and took inspiration from a 1930 policy that Švec has on his office wall: everything in one clear document. That took a clearly defined risk appetite. According to Švec, lawyers can work within a different framework when management openly tells them it accepts that it might lose the occasional dispute.

At the heart of Simplea’s philosophy is a “claims payment guarantee”. The claims committee also reviews cases the insurer wouldn’t have to pay, for example during a waiting period. The company also checks rejected claims. Claims handlers are expected to flag every difficult human story to management, even if they followed the contract to the letter. There are very few fraudsters, Švec says. He describes the company culture as an open, safe environment where people aren’t afraid to point out problems. He’s glad when colleagues from operations “storm into his office”, because it tells him something isn’t working.

Simplea is now growing from a “garage company” of thirty people to around seventy. It sells in Slovakia, is preparing to enter Poland and is building care facilities for seniors. Švec’s top priority is therefore to strengthen management so the company can handle the expansion without ending up like corporations that “push the new stuff ahead of them while the old stuff burns”.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• Why big insurers don’t automatically move clients to better terms

• Why managers in insurance think short-term

• How to write policy terms that customers understand

• Why Simplea checks rejected claims

• Why insurers lag behind banks in technology

• How Švec cut his working day from sixteen to twelve hours

According to Martin Švec, a customer-centric approach isn’t created in marketing slogans but in concrete decisions: whether a company voluntarily lowers its margin, simplifies its terms or pays out even where it doesn’t have to. And whether people inside the company feel free to speak up when they see that more could be done for a client.