Covid-19 has created massive waves of disruption across every sector. It has prompted consumer demands to shift. Customers are no longer seeking services, instead, they are looking for mobile solutions, which integrate several areas of assistance on a single platform. Covid-19 has been a driver for digital transformation. It has coerced companies regardless of their operating model, to instantaneously leverage new technologies. Organizations now need to imagine their future and position themselves for a new reality.
Kevin Steer, with One Two One Advisor Sdn. Bhd, aims to harness the power of technology to build a connected enterprise. He believes in building an enterprise where you are completely connected with your customers, employees, and business partners. One that enables you to respond quickly to market signals and move to seize opportunities as they arise.
One Two One Advisor has a customer-first connected enterprise digital framework. Their digital transformation approach is industry-specific and customer-centric. They focus on each and every critical process, function, and relationship of an organization to meet customer expectations, create business value, and drive sustainable growth in a digital world.
A Pioneering Entrepreneur
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1978, Kevin, worked for a company Schlumberger (in Brunei, Australia, Indonesia, China) for 5 years. After realizing the potential of IT and how it was evolving, in 1986, he completed a Masters in Computing from the Imperial College focused on Artificial Intelligence. Later on, he moved to Malaysia to implement solutions on Insurance and Banking where he was able to gain a footing for business in China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia.
In 2010, Kevin Steer started One Two One Advisor to develop InsurTech and FinTech solutions. He had a hard time for the first few years, but once they started getting customers, the company grew significantly and started rolling out new products to its 20+ customers.
As a CEO & Founder, Kevin plans to develop disruptive solutions for InsurTech & FinTech. “As a leader/entrepreneur; as a ‘Techie’ I design data models with SQL table designs and I deliver new solutions to our team members,” added Kevin.
Amid the pandemic, Kevin saw the opportunity and need to offer financial services and health services online with lifestyle financial and health advice. In September 2020, he launched a knowledge portal called u12know, which provides lifestyle advice on financial needs, as well as business planning and computation of a Total Health Score to advise people on their health & wellness planning. Since then they have grown to 5,000 users.
The Path to Success
During the initial few years, gaining customers was quite a challenge for Kevin. People were unaware of the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Nobody was interested in leaving the traditional and known methods and were wary about integrating new technology.
After the steady growth rate for the first four years, and as Artificial Intelligence evolved, the company’s customer base grew exponentially. After 2016, and with every passing year, the company innovated and launched new products and solutions under Kevin’s expert leadership.
Innovative Solutions and Services
121 Advisor is a visionary technology solution and consulting services company. It is armed with a team of talented professionals with a proven track record of success in serving clients across the Financial, Insurance, Takaful and Services sectors in the Asian countries for the past 20 years.
When Kevin Steer started 121 Advisor in 2010, they developed solutions for various technology and implementation problems. They launched a referral management solution for two banks.
For the InsurTech sector they kept introducing new products wherever they could implement, websites for customers with marketing automation and campaign solutions. Additionally, they launched mobile point of sales, where agents can submit online, also online direct sales for customers to buy digitally. They rolled out an online customer portal, where customers can check their policies and submit service requests to update their data.
Furthermore, they launched an N-Tier Agency Leader Corporation (ALC) Distribution Management Solution, which assesses agent performance, recommends agent promotion/demotion, computes their commission and makes payment to each agent. The Distribution Management solution is mobile responsive.
With an interest in Artificial Intelligence Kevin implemented a multi-lingual chatbot that included both responding to questions as well as Robo Advisor for financial services; plus they implemented predictive analytics for assessing new products, churn / lapsation, and in future investment analysis.
Kevin also took notice that most millennials in Asia Pacific do not understand financial planning, and often get into debt. He recognized the need to help educate them on their lifestyle financial goals and recommend products that they can buy online. With the launch of u12know, Kevin makes sure that this will become a disruptive knowledge portal offering advice on lifestyle financial & (in future) health goals. This will help them understand their needs and create a plan to help them build their lifestyle and business financial plans. For every country, it will be translated into the local language.
Advice for Young Entrepreneurs
Even as an Entrepreneur, Kevin likes to slow down things on the weekend. He likes to take a break from schedule and enjoy time with the family doing regular chores. Kevin advises aspiring leaders to do the same and to consider looking at new solutions and consider the risk analysis, by assessing the risk of the new solutions.
With the pandemic disrupting everything in 2020, Kevin and his team stood firmly against the adversities and launched their unique knowledge portal. By understanding his team’s needs, Kevin has steered his company in the endeavor to unlock the true potential of technology and implementation in the FinTech and InsurTech industry. He encourages the young people to keep learning and following their passions.
Future Plans
With a vision to become a renowned Financial, Insurance and Takaful technology enabler Kevin plans to expand his services in Singapore and Indonesia, while simultaneously looking for opportunities to expand into the markets of Europe and USA. In the coming years, the knowledge portal, u12know, will include health and wellness calculators 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.
He believes that new technologies will completely reform the traditional finance and insurance industry in the coming years. In order to aid this advancement, Kevin Steer alongwith 121 advisors will keep promoting their innovative technologies and work towards their effective application to Insurance, Takaful and Financial services.
