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Barbara Liebich Steiner is Chief Digital Officer and Head of Digital & Customer Solutions at UNIQA Insurance Group, based in Vienna, Austria. She leads group-wide digital strategy, automation, and customer experience initiatives. With over six years in UNIQA digital transformation and a background spanning UniCredit Bank Austria and governance roles, she shapes empathy driven, agile innovation across channels.
In an industry long defined by tradition, transformation isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a necessity. My job as Chief Digital Officer and Head of Digital & Customer Solutions at UNIQA Insurance Group is at the intersection of technology, customer experience, corporate culture, and innovation. We are in the middle of a people-powered shift toward a more agile, responsive, and empathetic future. As CDO, I’m responsible for driving UNIQA’s digital agenda across the group. That includes everything from overseeing digital products and customer journeys to leading automation initiatives and the data strategy that powers them. But above all, it’s about delivering seamless, value-adding digital interactions that truly reflect human needs. For me, digital transformation isn’t about flashy tech, it’s about relevance, trust, and intentional design. That’s particularly true when it comes to automation and customer-centric focus at the same time—spaces where insurers are increasingly investing. Automation is incredibly powerful, but without empathy, it risks feeling cold or transactional. The goal isn’t to replace humans, but to empower them and make their work life more effective—to let machines handle the repetitive so humans can do what they do best: build relationships, advise, and empathize. This approach is operationalized through hybrid service models. At UNIQA, intelligent tools support rather than supplant frontline employees, especially during sensitive moments in the customer journey—finding the right product, filing a claim after a loss, asking for guidance, or navigating complex policies. It’s about using technology to enable, not erase, the human connection and offering our clients the best products and services on their preferred touchpoints. Balancing speed, innovation, and empathy is no small ambition, and it requires a lot of orchestration. Speed helps us stay competitive. Innovation keeps us relevant. Empathy builds loyalty. We rely on agile frameworks to adjust that balance depending on the situation. This agility has become a hallmark of UNIQA’s digital evolution, but the difference between digitization and true transformation goes far deeper than workflows or tools. Digitization is surface-level—it’s about implementing systems or moving to digital channels. Transformation is cultural. It changes how decisions are made, how teams collaborate, and how success is defined. Transformation requires courage, and it takes bravery to challenge legacy structures, to experiment, and to embrace the possibility of failure. But without that mindset, all the technology in the world won’t deliver meaningful change. My advice to other digital leaders working inside complex organization is simple and at the same time hard to achieve: “Start with trust, then scale.” Whether it’s introducing a new platform or reshaping a process—success depends on building trust across all levels of the business. You need to show early wins, communicate clearly, and bring people along with you. Change doesn’t happen because a system was installed, it happens because people believe in what they’re building. At UNIQA, this belief is embedded in every layer of the digital strategy. It’s not about transformation for its own sake. It’s about creating a future where technology amplifies empathy, and innovation serves the customer—not the other way around. “Transformation isn’t a tech project, it’s a people movement!”