‘My second 10-year-old baby’: The inside story of QBE’s SME surveys

For over a decade, QBE’s SME surveys for Singapore and Hong Kong have provided invaluable insights for businesses, intermediaries and us. Its journey wasn’t smooth sailing, yet its legacy should enable us all to thrive in the future.

At the start of each year, QBE publishes its annual SME Surveys, one each for Singapore and Hong Kong. Both have become an integral part of our yearly content calendar. Providing in-depth views and insights from some 600 small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) leaders from a wide range of industries in both markets, it has become the barometer for business sentiment in these places.

Each edition is extensive, with thousands of responses collected from survey participants, from which we are able to glean rich insights as to their views on a wide variety of business- and insurance-related topics.

Both versions attract a sizeable amount of publicity from the press — at the time of writing, the 2025 edition numbered 784 media pickups across the two markets.

This year, Singapore’s edition turned 10 years old: a genuine milestone for such an exercise. However, there was a time that I thought it wouldn’t last two years, let alone a decade.

Luckily, the project was well thought out from day one, which has enabled it to thrive, despite some headwinds at the start. Through careful planning, and collaboration between various teams internally and externally, the surveys remain important to our policy holders, intermediaries, ourselves and the wider SME community in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Here is the inside story of my second 10-year-old “baby”— the QBE SME surveys for Singapore and Hong Kong.

Digital dilemma

Readers of QBE Insights and Expertise may recall my first “baby”: ‘My 10-year-old baby’: The inside story of QBE Qnect. The piece documents the building of Qnect, QBE’s all-encompassing online portal for intermediaries. The fully automated portal allows intermediaries — to manage their clients’ portfolio of policies, send automated renewals, process a variety of digital payments, and much more.

However, we were also cognisant that such a system could diminish customer engagement and lessen our brand’s presence among SMEs. On one hand, we wanted to grow and increase our premium in the SME sector but do it profitably without additional human resources. There were also very few players aspiring to digitalize the job of intermediaries; hence we would be an early-mover, and hopefully respected for the convenience Qnect would add to the job of intermediaries.

Yet on the other hand, we were fully aware that digitalisation could reduce our market presence to policy holders and end-customers. Like other businesses at that time, insurance relied heavily on in-person relationships, and there was a risk that by intermediaries not engaging in person with their customers, they may choose rival solutions and our market share would diminish.

How could we overcome our digital dilemma — by launching Qnect and maintaining engagement with customers?

‘All-encompassing solution’

Less in-person interaction with our intermediaries also diminished our fact-finding capabilities. All businesses, not just insurance providers, must keep their ear to the ground and understand evolving client challenges and preferences. Back then, it was not only important to gauge what risks SMEs were most concerned about and the types of policies they demanded; we also had to understand their views on insurance digitalisation as well. Quite simply, we needed to know what they wanted and create products and services that met these needs.

Then there was the issue of being able to provide regular thought leadership that addressed the concerns of both intermediaries and policy holders. We didn’t need to only provide risk solutions, we needed to create meaningful business cases for why a particular product, and why QBE, especially with in-person engagement diminishing.

We wanted something that both gauged the market and was able to generate insights that would be helpful for all. Through many a long brainstorming session, with many different departments present including the underwriting and marketing and communications teams, the decision to launch an SME survey was taken.

Such an exercise would enable us to engage in a new way with customers and intermediaries — many of the latter were SMEs themselves and would gain operational insights from the survey as well. We could create thought leadership off the back of the survey. Plus we could align ourselves more closely with the SME community, by providing definitive surveys for both markets. Like Qnect, the survey had the potential to become an all-encompassing solution.

Disagreements and missed deadlines

Putting together a customer survey is no easy task. There are so many considerations to ponder over. We first had to set goals and objectives, to ensure that we were clear on what we wanted, and how the exercise would benefit each stakeholder.

We also needed to appoint an external vendor. Surveys require vast databases and the email addresses of target respondents. We also had to entice respondents to participate, something that is typically left to the survey vendor. Then there is the issue of data capture and analysis. Fortunately, the survey market back in late-2015 was mature, with different vendors having the tools and technology to manage these issues well.

Then there are the matter of topics and questions. This would be a collaborative effort. Myself, and later my counterpart in Hong Kong, would choose the themes we would like to explore, and delegate the crafting of survey questions to our marketing and communications colleagues, and the survey vendor.

While for me the process was overall smooth, disagreements invariably occurred. Teams became unaligned. Priorities were sidelined and deadlines were missed. On the eve of the survey’s first email blast to Singapore SMEs, I was convinced it would be unsuccessful. It would struggle to make a second edition, let alone 10, I thought.

Against the odds

Fortunately, I was wrong. The survey results were impressive in terms of respondent number. Over 450 SME leaders from Singapore participated in our first survey. Furthermore, the responses were very detailed. The survey had performed against the odds.

Hong Kong’s maiden SME survey from 2018 attracted 415 participants.

Looking back over the past 10 editions, each version documented annual customer sentiment towards a wide variety of contemporary topics. A snapshot of history, in other words. In every instance, this enabled us to respond with new and revised products, while passing on insights to customers and intermediaries.

The first few editions revealed concerns for automation and how this might displace workforces, create new costs, and bring about novel technological risks for instance. During COVID, we saw interest in work-from-home as well as traditional brick-and-mortar businesses expanding into e-commerce and the myriad of new risks these presented to them. And more recently, we’ve seen widespread concern for spiraling business costs, inflation and business interruption.

Future editions

Not wanting to rest on our laurels, we’re eager to refresh and further expand our SME outreach.

We are currently in the process of exploring exciting, alternative forms of content to make the experience more immersive and rewarding to the SME and insurance communities in both Singapore and Hong Kong. We are also planning to work more creatively with higher education institutions and industry associations, with the goal of bringing our findings to new audiences — watch this space.

Indeed, as I look to the next 10 years, I look forward to continuing to provide invaluable business findings to SMEs owners and our partner intermediaries.