Insurance transformation in action: KBC
KBC in Belgium presented the incredible transformation work they have accomplished.
As part of the Qorus Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026, we selected a few of the insurance players whose projects impressed us the most. Among them, KBC in Belgium presented the incredible transformation work they have accomplished.
What transformation strategy has your organization led in recent years?
KBC has led a multi-year transformation anchored in its "digital first with a human touch" strategy, evolving from a traditional bancassurer into a customer-centric, ecosystem-driven financial services group. The vision is to embed banking and insurance seamlessly into customers' daily lives and key life moments.
The transformation spans:
- Business model: from product-centric to ecosystem- and value-based propositions
- Operating model: E2E digital journeys with seamless human fallback
- Technology: AI, data, cloud and scalable platform capabilities
- Customer experience: hyper-personalized, proactive and omnichannel
- Workforce and culture: cross-functional collaboration, experimentation and ownership
Flagship initiatives such as KBC Mobile with digital assistant Kate, Kate Coins, ecosystem services, AI-driven insurance journeys and Agentic AI in operations show how KBC consistently translates strategy into scalable, customer-relevant innovation.
What prompted this strategic transformation?
The transformation was driven by fundamental shifts in customer experience, rapid digitalization, increasing complexity of financial and insurance products, and rising cost and efficiency pressures.
Customer expect intuitive, always-available digital services combined with trusted human advice at critical moments.
At the same time, competition from digital-native players and Big Tech increased the urgency to differentiate through trust, relevance and simplicity, rather than price alone.
Internally, KBC recognized the need to scale innovation beyond isolated initiatives and embed it structurally across banking and insurance.
Long-term goals included safeguarding customer trust, improving operational efficiency, strengthening ecosystem propositioning, and ensuring sustainable growth in a regulated environment. These dynamics prompted leadership to invest decisively in digital platforms, AI, data-driven decisioning and a unified bancassurance experience.
What have been the most significant changes implemented, and how were they led?
KBC's most significant shift has been moving from siloed products to end-to-end, ecosystem-enabled customer journeys, where banking and insurance become part of daily life and key life moments. This is powered by a platform approach around KBC Mobile and digital assistant Kate, enabling seamless orchestration across digital and human channels.
Concrete insurance examples include Kate-to-You ecosystem flows such as Start2Drive, where Kate proactively proposed a tailored motor insurance formula to parents of a child nearing 18, and Kate Coins, which customers can earn via fully digital Autopolis flows and redeem for bicycle insurance or fraud & scam protection.
Leadership enabled this shift through clear enterprise ambition, strong governance and reusable group capabilities ("build once, deploy across countries"). External validation followed: Kate was again named "Best Bot of Belgium" after a benchmark across 65 chatbots, confirming the transformation's impact and maturity.
What unique or key transformation practices do you follow to ensure success?
KBC executes transformation through scalable platforms, cross-functional teams, and ecosystem partnerships - but a unique differentiator is Start It @KBC, our long-running startup accelerator. Start It @KBC strengthens KBC's innovation engine by connecting corporate expertise with entrepreneurial speed, real customer problems, and rapid experimentation.
In addition to coaching, community and connections, Start It @KBC and KBC Group also created founder-friendly funding: 100M EUR investment for Start It startups via an early-stage fund ("Start It Fund") and later-stage funding through KBC Securities - helping promising ventures scale beyond pilots.
This combination of innovation practice + structured funding turns collaboration into repeatable outcomes, fuels ecosystem growth, and reinforces KBC's ability to industrialize innovation (inc. in digital and AI capabilities) while staying compliant and customer-centric.
How has your workforce been engaged and transformed through this journey?
KBC's workforce transformation is anchored in PEARL+, our shared leadership and culture framework: Performance, Empowerment, Accountability, Responsiveness, Local embeddedness (+ partnerships/synergies).
PEARL+ creates psychological safety and clear ownership so teams can innovate across functions and countries while keeping the customer first. In practice, leaders empower employees to take initiative, learn from outcomes, and continuously professionalize - supported by transparent feedback and shared responsibility.
This cultural foundation is reinforced by "augmentation" through Kate: Kate4Employees supports colleagues with commercial steering, automation of administrative tasks, and better coaching/management insights - freeing time for high-value customer interactions.
Together, PEARL+ and digital augmentation make transformation tangible for employees: less repetitive work, clearer priorities, and more impact where humans add the most value.
What measurable outcomes demonstrate the success of your transformation?
KBC's transformation delivers "wow-effect" outcomes at scale through Kate and digital ecosystems.
In 2025, Kate handled 7.9 million conversations ( +/- 21,500/day) and reached 82% autonomy - meaning most questions were correctly understood and resolved without human intervention.
Kate's growth is structural: usage rose from +/- 1.35M (2021) to +/- 7.91M (2025), and KBC now targets 10M conversations in 2026.
Kate is also an efficiency engine: the 10M ambition explicitly aims to avoid +/- 338k inbound human interactions in 2026, equivalent to +/- 38 FTE in the network (based on autonomy and handling-time assumptions in the business case). The capability base is broad: >250 Kate use cases are already in place.
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