THE INCEPTION OF 121ADVISOR
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1978, Kevin commenced his Schlumberger journey and worked there for five years. There, he witnessed the mind-boggling evolution of the IT sector and made his mind pursue Masters in Computing from Imperial College.
Artificial intelligence had made its mark on Kevin’s mind. As a CEO and a ‘technology person’, Kevin had always strived to look at new solutions to continue evolving the business. What was interesting was that he worked for an Artificial Intelligence Company in 1986, and that piqued his interest in AI. 121Advisor started researching on AI solutions and the team implemented 24×7 multi-lingual Chatbots, Robo Advisors for lifestyle financial planning, as well as implementing Predictive Analytics solutions for predicting new products to buy, lapsation of policies & fraudulent claims; which are integrated with RPA solutions to trigger workflows to notify the relevant people.
With his passion growing, he moved to Malaysia to turn his ideas into services and implement solutions on banking and insurance. He targeted China, India, and other Asian countries to expand the horizons for his business.
During this period, he honed his skills and gained valuable experience. In 2010, Kevin set up 121 Advisory to develop smart FinTech and InsurTech solutions with the vision of simplifying technology and creating a new dimension into the financial and insurance sector.
He aims to develop a unique knowledge portal named u12know in multi-lingual translations and share with all the customers in Asia Pacific countries and then move to Europe and the US. The company is currently collaborating with several banks and insurers.
PORTFOLIO OF SERVICES PROVIDED
The company has a diverse portfolio that offers a multitude of services.
- Predictive Analytics with Machine Learning
- Multi-lingual Chatbot for Financial, Insurance & Takaful (FITbot)
Multi-lingual Robo Advisor and a chatbot that utilizes hybrid trees and natural language processing (NLP) to engage with customers to offer a more personalized customer experience and generate more referrals.
- Web Portal Solution for Sales & Servicing (WebPoS)
Multi-lingual mobile responsive website and portal solution to enable clients to experience a unified personalized digital experience where content, sales, marketing, and work management are consolidated instead of siloed.
- Referral Management & Marketing Automation (ReMMA)
Used by banks to effectively and efficiently auto-assign leads, track, and manage lead referrals and conversions based on user-defined workflows. Marketing automation results in personalized content delivery targeted campaigns and engagement.
- Sales Activity Mobile App (SAMA)
Allows agents to effectively plan and manage sales activity to ensure all leads and prospects are addressed. Managers can monitor real-time to render assistance where necessary.
- Online Sales Solutions
They have implemented an online sales solution, for customers to buy online.
- Community & E-worksite Marketing & Distribution (CeMD)
Community portal solution allows organizations to engage with members of their community to nurture trust and create advocates thereby improving customer retention. Recently launched u12know knowledge portal.
- Customer Service Portal
The Customer Self Service Portal is an on-demand access point enabling the customer to view their insurance/takaful account, anywhere and anytime. This enables the policyholders to view their policies and certificate details via a simple internet connection. The portal provides a safe avenue for customers to update their personal information, pay the premium, switch funds, print documents, update beneficiary details, request policy changes and engage in filing claims and processing, which traditionally would take weeks to be executed due to siloed lines of business. Providing a portal for your customers with the convenience of self-servicing, customers can enjoy the freedom of doing what’s convenient for them when they want anywhere. - Takaful & Insurance Mobility Made Simple (TIMMS)
A cross-platform mobile point of sales solution allowing agents to identify client financial needs via Customer Fact Find, recommend products, make presentations, generate quotes and e-submit applications, in a regulatory compliant process. Solutions for IOS, Android & Windows. - Enterprise Product Configurator (EPC)
Reduces the time to market for insurance and takaful products. Built to rapidly set up product rates, illustrations, validation engine as well as an automated testing module allows quick product deployment.
- Multi-channel Distribution Management Solution (McDMS)
For general agencies, IFAs, brokers, Agency Leader Corporations (ALCs) simplify operations by consolidating their diverse requirements. With built-in performance management and compensation computation, their clients have seen improved sales with reduced administration costs.
THE COMPANY IN THE YEARS TO COME
With Kevin’s astounding ideas and a passion to change the AI sector, the 121Advisor has recently launched a knowledge portal www.u12know.com in Malaysia in September 2020, where they are actively onboarding users.
121Advisor will be signing up with several banks, insurers, takaful operators, unit trust companies & will-writing services to offer their services online.
They aim to improve the financial literacy and personal wellness for southeast Asian millennials, by providing an online community portal known as u12know.com, where community members can self-educate on various financial and wellness topics, seek opinions & professional advice from community members & Independent Financial Advisors and finally purchase products or services if they so choose. This will be rolled out to multiple countries in South East Asia with multi-lingual translations for each country.
The portal consists of 3 components:
a. Providing Financial Advice for each lifestyle (e.g. cost of getting married, how much to have a child, child education, medical & critical illness planning).
b. My Business providing advice on corporate loans, employee benefits, product liability, director protection.
c. Health & Wellness providing health calculators with a ‘Total Health Score’ to assess a person’s wellness (healthy, unhealthy, at risk).
121Advisor has grown to 20+ companies, and they are growing further. They plan to expand to Singapore and Indonesia. They plan to grow the u12know in APAC countries, and they plan to expand to the USA & Europe.
KEVIN AS A LEADING LIGHT FOR HIS TEAM
With his experience and understanding, Kevin acts as an outstanding leader and mentor. He realises the importance of making the environment comfortable for his colleagues. He recognises their ideas and inputs and constantly motivates them to think and innovate.
He handles the mobile and web development teams and leads them with precision and utmost dedication. A strong believer in quality, Kevin has an efficient management system. He discusses all the elements with the whole squad regularly and focuses on achieving daily milestones.
With the organisation under his supervision, the company has taken up several projects and delivered compelling results.
