2023 Goals and Achievements- Concrete behaviors of financial-friendly service
★Obtained accessibility AAA mark for financial-friendly service section and received letter from Ministry of Digital Affairs for the appreciation of creating the environment of web accessibility to ensure rights and interests for people with disabilities.
★Established a dedicated section of treating clients fairly on the office website to highlight our excellent service performance and friendly-service measures.
★Financial-friendly service measures, such as friendly service counter, appointed person reservation service, and new service of video sign language interpretation.
★Prepared assistive devices like wheelchair at reception counters in branch companies and ensured accessible facilities in each regional service center.
★Established “Mercuries Life Insurance Financial-friendly Service Measures” based on the Criteria of Financially Friendly Service for Insurance Enterprises published by the competent authority and posted it on the “financial-friendly service section” on the Company’s website.
★Business Planning Department was in charge of coordinating and implementing financial-friendly matters in each unit and formulating action plans. In the management meeting for treating clients fairly, the concrete behaviors of financial-friendly services at each responsible department were reviewed to ensure the actual implementation. Problems were collected for supervision, follow-up, and improvement before being reported to the Board of Directors.
★All directors, the accountable person for the Company, and senior managers completed the course of “Financially Friendly and Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)” in 2023. The completion rate was 100%.
- Promotion of inclusive financing
★Hosted rural “financial gold brain cultivation program” public welfare course tour at several multicultural school in rural areas to root the seeds of inclusive financing at each corner.
★Held activity of “Children’s Financial Summer Camp for Policy Holders”.
- Development of products and services for young groups
★Lowered the age to register online insurance and online travel insurance to 18 years old.
★Lower the age to purchase online riders’ insurance and riders’ accident insurance to 18 years old to expand the products and services to young groups.
- Development of services for elderly group and people with disabilities to reduce the digital divide
★Added “voice CAPTCHA” on the official website to reduce digital divide for people with visual impairment.
★Completed seminars of service experience for people with disabilities, held customer service supervision and training courses, and enhanced service quality for disadvantaged groups.
★Simplified terms used for service and produced service easy-read version of documents.
- Optimization service items to meet customer expectation
★Integrated service procedures of each operation and set up service quality attention indicators
★Pushed forwards whole complaint process inspection to implement the grievance handling mechanism
★In 2023, the complaint ranked the first while the evaluation rate ranked the third.
★Established self-assessment standards and reference indicators for treating clients fairly
2024 Goals- Promote and supervise the implementation of fair customer treatment and cultivate fair customer treatment culture.
- Establish good customer service system and process optimization to provide customer care service.
- Put forward specific actions for the fair customer treatment with bright points.
- Inspect the implementation of fair customer treatment in each unit quarterly, and carry out self-assessment of the Company's fair customer treatment every year.
- Regularly hold fair customer treatment education and training.
- Plan fair customer treatment zone in the Company’s website.
To promote and establish a corporate culture centered in “treating clients fairly”, other than formulating “Mercuries Life Insurance Treating-Clients- Fairly Principal Strategy”, and “Mercuries Life Insurance Treating-Clients- Fairly Principal Policy”, the Company also formulated “Methods Governing Treating-Clients-Fairly Management Meeting” and set up the treating-clients-fairly management meeting. Operational Planning Department is appointed as the dedicated unit, and the Chief Operating Officer (Senior Vice President) is in charge of leading the business promotion of treating clients fairly. A meeting is held every quarter, implementation plans and measures are formulated through the management meeting to thoroughly fulfill the principles for treating clients fairly. After the meeting, the management meeting minutes shall be submitted to the Board of Directors to ensure the implementation results. With the participation of the Board of Directors, we built the culture of treating clients fairly from top down. In Q4 2023, we invited directors attended the meeting for instruction. The implementation results of treating clients fairly will be explained, discussed, and improved every quarter.
In 2023, we invited an external legal consultant to deliver advanced training in treating client fairly to understand the key points of topics related to treating client fairly concerned by the competent authority. Through the seminar, we invited colleagues to join the training. The training was provided to departments that are required to fill the form of treating client fairly, service centers for policy holders, and regional divisions. With topics of “protecting financially disadvantaged groups and fulfilling the principle of ethical management”, we collected supervisory trends and law modification updates from the competent authority recently and provided the information to internal personnel. Based on life cycles of insurance policies, we guided each department step by step to value the topic and develop ideas with concrete behaviors. Besides, with reference to the supervision experience from companies in the same trade, we provided suggestions and reinforced measures for treating clients fairly. Directors, the responsible person of the Company, and senior managers all completed “Financial-friendly and Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) course” in 2023 with a training completion rate of 100%.
Along with the estimation that Taiwan will step from an aged society into a super-aged society in 2025, retirement reserve is getting more and more important to the general public day after day. The competent authority has planned a retirement reserve platform that combines protection, investment, and public welfare promotion altogether. The Company is proactive in responding to the government policy and started to prepare the webpage and product design for “protection product platform” in 2021. On July 1, 2022, it was launched on the platform to sell three categories of insurance, including fixed-term life insurance, small amount whole life insurance, and critical illness insurance, and it contains 6 insurance products. At the same time, we work hard in promoting insurance education. In 2023, we established “online insurance learning corner” to clarify basic concepts on “protection products” through Q&A. We hope to overturn insurance disadvantages via education so that customers can choose products that are suitable for them. Moreover, we promote protection products on self-media according to different holidays and festivals to enhance risk awareness among the public.
In 2023, the Company planned to merge original “accessible webpage” and “financially friendly service section” on the official website as well as added functions of font size changing and voice broadcasting to completely disclose the Company’s financial-friendly service measures. Superior to the legal regulations published by the competent authority, we obtained the accessibility label in the highest level AAA. It has been formally launched on October 31, 2023.
To strengthen friendly service measures, Mercuries Life Insurance works with Taiwanese Association of Sign Language Interpreters to offer “reserved sign language interpretation service” at the reception counter in each local policy holder service center for customers with hearing and speech impairment. The service has been provided in December 2023 to enhance customers’ service quality and to reduce digital divide for disadvantaged groups.
In addition, “voice CAPTCHA” has been added on the online insurance section to provide the disadvantaged groups (people with hearing and speech impairment) friendly environment of financial operation to support the service philosophy of treating clients fairly promoted by the competent authority.
The Company updated the official website and the policy holder section in 2021. We comprehensively reviewed the information disclosed in the policy holder section and use the approach that is easy to be understood by policy holders to explain the status of investment transactions and contract change cases to help policy holders to fully understand matters applied and the content. We completed the optimization on 30 functions for investment-linked insurance policies, including investment targets and account value. Besides, 18 functions used very frequently were embedded in the policy holder APP to respond to the high popularity of mobile devices and facilitate best operating interface in different devices used by customers. We work with TAIWAN-CA INC. on multiple identity authentication programs. To enhance the efficiency of online membership application by policy holders, we introduced a multiple identity authentication mechanism so that policy holders can complete the application online directly and enjoy various services and functions in the policy holder section directly without waiting the password letter by post. The function of multiple identity authentication service was formally launched in 2021, providing three functions of online banking account and password, citizen digital certificate, and IC bank card in 2021. In 2022, we launched three functions of supermarket eDDA, Post Office ATM card, and ibon verification. In 2023, we launched mobile ID verification service function. There were 7 verification functions for customers to choose from. In 2023, the number of people using automatic service was 590,000 people in total.
From 2014, we pushed for the business of microinsurance and took the initiative in working with schools, social welfare groups, and local governments, including colleges and universities, Child Welfare League Foundation, Association for Victims Support, and Nantou County Government. In the approach of insurance premium donation, we provide one-year micro-accident insurance to economically disadvantaged groups and college and university students who are exempt from tuition and miscellaneous fees. The coverage amount per person is up to NT$0.5 million to help mitigating economic impact to the family by accidents. From 2014 to now, through premium donation, we keep providing the protection of one-year micro-accident insurance to students who are exempt from tuition and miscellaneous fees, social welfare group members, or economically disadvantaged groups identified by local government with the coverage amount per person up to NT$0.5 million. When encountering accidents, it performs the function of protection to reduce the economic impact to the family and further construct a protective net for social security. In 2023, we donated to 20 colleges & universities, 1 social welfare institution, and 2 counties and cities. The total premium donation was over NT$4.74 million, and the number of people insured of the year was 24,337 people. From 2014 to the end of 2023, the accumulated donation was over NT$34 million, and the accumulated number of people insured was more than 130,000 people. In 2024, we will continue the donation for microinsurance to fully perform our corporate sustainable development responsibility. Combining microinsurance premium donation with the sponsorship to Ming Chuan University SPROUT Project fundraising, we donated NT$4.89 million in total in 2023. The “SPROUT Project” is a policy published by Ministry of Education to sponsor the university strengthening disadvantaged students for their studying and supervision mechanism to ensure students able to concentrate on their studying without worrying their tuition and living expense and overturn their future through education.