Tatjana Lalkovic, SVP and CIO of Economical Insurance, Discusses Digital Innovation Amid COVID-19

How to leverage innovative digital technologies to solve business problems and deliver customer-centric experiences

(Toronto – March 17, 2021) – Customers have come to expect the same integrated digital experience from their insurance company as they have from advanced tech companies, according to Tatjana Lalkovic, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Technology Solutions with Economical Insurance. “They want to be engaged in the way they want, and it’s key for us to meet them there.”

Lalkovic, a digital transformation leader with decades of financial services and telecommunications experience, joined Economical in February 2020, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On February 23, 2021, Lalkovic spoke at a CSIO member webinar on The Digital Transformation Agenda: Building the Foundation for Future Success, where she discussed the digital transformation journey at Economical digital transformation journey with moderator Catherine Smola, President and CEO of CSIO.

The Transformation Journey of Economical

Now celebrating its 150th anniversary, Economical is a leading Canadian property and casualty insurer – and the first in Canada to pursue demutualization and planning to become a public company. Its storied history is proof that the company is well versed in what it takes to be a longstanding partner to Canadians and build relationships of trust with brokers.

During the forum, Lalkovic spoke on a range of topics related to the digital agenda for Economical, including how it defined its digital platform strategy to deliver value to its brokers and customers, how it aligned its teams to continue delivering with speed, its ability to attract key talent, and how it enabled 98 per cent of its workforce to safely work remotely within the first two weeks of the pandemic measures. Lalkovic emphasized that Economical is continuously evolving its business to compete effectively with strong digital capabilities, sophisticated pricing models, modern tools, insightful metrics, as well as deep expertise and new skills to meet customer expectations.

She shared:

“We have a diversely experienced leadership team which together, is focused on continuous purposeful innovation – and thinking outside the box. I am a big supporter of agile delivery practices with close business collaboration and measurable incremental value. By keeping our ear to the ground, we can quickly identify pressure points and pivot to develop industry leading solutions for our customers.”

Focus on Brokers and Customers

Lalkovic shared that she was initially drawn to Economical because of the company’s strong track record for supporting its brokers and customers. She emphasized how pleased she was to announce that Economical had recently adopted the My Proof of Insurance solution: “It’s one of the great examples of how we enable our brokers to deliver digital capabilities to their customers. As an industry we need to focus on leveraging common solutions to improve the broker and customer experience, and to get us there faster.”

The two leaders also discussed the future of insurance technology, with Lalkovic projecting that a decade from now, the focus will likely still be on cloud, data, cybersecurity and Insurtech. “Leveraging data is critical for success,” said Lalkovic. “Businesses must consider augmenting their existing infrastructure with re-usable frameworks and automation to enable agility. These models will allow you to continuously explore the data in different ways, create technology flexibly to enable the exploration, trust the data, and have it secured – all critical for innovating with speed and purpose.”

The webinar was part of CSIO’s education offerings of free, accredited live webinars and eLearning courses. The webinar is now available to CSIO members as an on-demand course as part of the Spotlight Series of one-hour video courses led by senior industry leaders. Go to CSIO.com/eLearning for more information.

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About Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO)

CSIO is Canada’s industry association of property and casualty insurers, service providers and over 38,000 brokers. CSIO is committed to improving the consumer’s ease of doing business within the broker channel by overseeing the development, implementation and maintenance of technology standards and solutions such as My Proof of Insurance, eDocs, and eSignatures. In addition, CSIO operates the industry-owned mail network service, CSIOnet. CSIO maintains offices in Toronto and Montreal. For more information, visit csio.com.

For further information, please contact:

Sarina Visram, MBA, CIP | Director, Member Relations & Communications
110 Yonge Street, Suite 500 | Toronto, ON M5C 1T4
(416) 360-1773 x 2(416) 360-1773 x 2300
svisram@csio.com | www.csio.com
 

About Economical Insurance

Economical Mutual Insurance Company (“Economical” or “Economical Insurance”, which includes its subsidiaries where the context so requires) is a leading property and casualty insurer in Canada, with over $2.8 billion in annual gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2020 and over $6.6 billion in assets as at December 31, 2020. Economical is a Canadian-owned and operated company that services the insurance needs of more than one million customers.

Media Inquiries:
Chloe Matcham, Specialist,
Public and Media Relations
(C) 225.725.9674
Chloe.matcham@economical.com