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Let’s break down that headline a little. Troo is a digital insurance company in the Philippines that is a joint venture partnership between Ageas and EastWest Bank. Ageas is not only a 190-year-old company, but also Belgium’s largest insurer, employing over 40,000 people while operating in 14 countries worldwide.

EastWest Bank is one of the biggest banks in the Philippines and has a 400-plus branch network throughout the country. The stated mission of this new and synergistic partnership is to give young Filipinos a sustainable advantage in life, as well as to allow all Filipinos to gain access to Ageas’s established insurance innovations.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that every startup will be a success - even one that combines the strength and history of two proven financial leaders. In fact, according to Fortune Magazine, 9 out of 10 startups fail, so starting a high-growth company can be a little tricky.

However, the CEO of Ageas in the Philippines, Hans Loozekoot, believes that EastWest Bank’s deep understanding of Filipino customers will be essential. So with the excitement of a startup, the new company is in the process of shaking up what has long been seen worldwide as a complicated and stodgy industry.  Loozekoot believes that as a digital insurance company that’s being built from the ground up, having the best available technology will help ensure the success of Troo.

“When you start a company from scratch, you have to look at your market and understand the people. We’ve entered into a real partnership with SAP. It’s important that we have access to the latest developments in the digital space. SAP is becoming more and more of a partner for us when it comes to innovation.

The difficulty in starting a new insurance company is that you need many IT components. How nice would it be if there was a box that contains everything that you need from day one, and you could plug it in and it works for you? Well that’s the main reason I got in touch with SAP.”

With 119 million mobile connections, Filipinos are among the heaviest users of mobile devices in the world. With this in mind, the company determined that they needed technology that offered a balance between being able to connect to their customers digitally and through traditional face-to-face interaction. Loozekoot described how the company brought the two worlds together:

“We decided to go for the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. I’m proud to say that we have implemented an end-to-end cloud-based solution from SAP.”

At the recent Insurance Innovation Event in San Francisco, Loozekoot described how Troo also needed to connect with their customers through different platforms and channels. This included staying connected through the company website, Facebook, LinkedIn, or apps that the business may develop over time.

Clearly, the digital savvy insurance customer of today expects to be provided answers on the spot. And since the company goal is to continue to get closer to the customer, the next step will be implementing an SAP Hybris solution.

“We needed to have a consistent message to different channels, and SAP Hybris will enable us to do so.”

There will surely continue to be changes in the insurance industry in the coming years. Troo is leveraging the SAP ecosystem to innovate and be ready with systems that are agile enough to accommodate dynamic customer demands and expectations.

The conclusion of this Troo story is that there’s a digital insurance startup in the Philippines that was not only ready for business on day one but will also be ready for the future.

Learn more about Troo in this video.