The pretty nature of life insurance coverage company guidelines out possibilities for frequent or periodical consumer engagement for enhancing bonding with policyholders. Payment of premium at fixed intervals does bring the consumer in speak to with the organisation but in a couple of years the activity is either taken more than by the intermediaries or becomes just a mechanical workout not yielding any added worth either for the policyholder or for the insurer. But as the Covid-19 dominated 2020 offers way to the new year, the fallouts of the pandemic could act as a important catalyst to transform the aforesaid partnership.
Lockdown and the preventive precautions and measures at person as nicely as at the organisational levels have transformed the entire social and financial ecosystem globally. Work from dwelling (WFH) overturned several universally accepted norms in the company globe. The emerging situation is opening new avenues for innovations and technologies driven possibilities for speeding up production and distribution as nicely as for building more powerful tools and methods for consumer creation. Life insurance coverage getting a service market, advertising intangible items, will be facing higher challenges in the coming year. Maximising worth for dollars and simplifying solution supplying by introducing revolutionary items which satisfy numerous wants by means of a single buy could go nicely with the youth today.
Need for unconventional insurance coverage items
The onset of the pandemic, ever escalating incidence of individuals succumbing to the virus and the price involved in high-quality therapy have brought to surface an awful gap in between what a frequent endowment or term policy supplies and what the policyholder genuinely wants in such a circumstance. Insurers as nicely as the policyholders have realised that there is a require for unconventional items which the clients can utilise in a assortment of scenarios to get not only worth for dollars but also to tackle unforeseen scenarios like the pandemic. In the existing decade, digitisation of every single conceivable require of the consumer for empowering her to improve, alter or diversify the rewards inside a broad parameter from the comfort of her dwelling could quickly be a important differentiator.
Insurance has to be more versatile and more extensive in its characteristics so that the dollars invested yields essential monetary help when it is required most and that as well in the most unexpected scenarios. People have lost breadearners to the pandemic, breadearners have lost jobs if they have escaped the virus, entrepreneurs have lost purchasers or clients even if they have managed to maintain the production floor active by means of a skeleton workforce. A policy with a wide variety of rewards that could allow a policyholder to overcome the existing crisis has been conspicuous by its absence.Covid-19 has also highlighted the urgency to have wellness cover as an in-constructed advantage in a frequent endowment or dollars back policy. The solution improvement teams of insurers need to discover the possibility of delivering monetary help if the policyholder gets afflicted by a pandemic as they do in the case of permanent or partial disability.
Convenience to policyholders
The pandemic is also motivating insurers about the globe to create apps and other tech capabilities which would supply comfort to the policyholders to switch rewards as and when they really feel the require to do so. It is, of course, understood that such switches would be inside the monetary parameters. But denying such access in the prevailing technological situation would be a regressive policy which could in the end push the insurers into an inescapable crisis. It is anticipated that the insuring public could expertise revolutionary offerings on a huge scale from the insurers.
The year 2021 need to see huge-scale information mining and application of Artificial Intelligence by the insurers. This could in the end prove a game changer in the sphere of consumer engagement and satisfaction. Intelligent options to make consumer engagement a reality are most likely to engage the focus of all the insurers in India. Insurers could take methods to refurbish their image as a companion in all tricky scenarios by introducing items with numerous alternatives and coverage, app primarily based entry and exit alternatives and of course, realistic pricing.
The writer is former MD & CEO, Star Union Dai-ichi Life