By Amit Palta
The require for a sharper distribution tactic has in no way been more pressing, with digital disruption altering the small business landscape across sectors and enterprises. Covid-19 has only hastened this course of action of modify in distribution models across industries. Distribution is a essential hyperlink that connects items with shoppers. For a customer-focused organization across industries, it is even more crucial to sharpen its tactic in the present context.
The life insurance coverage business is no unique. The pandemic has driven insurance coverage providers to integrate greatest practices of distribution, with comfort, security, safety and technologies becoming the guiding mantra for interacting with a wider variety of shoppers. When individuals could not come out of their houses due to the stringent lockdown, it disrupted the decades-old life insurance coverage sales course of action that depended heavily on face-to-face meetings. However, most life insurance coverage corporations in India straight away shifted their promoting course of action on the net, supplying a seamless digital platform for shoppers to buy and address their service specifications from the comfort of their houses.
Apart from focusing on constructing digital capabilities for numerous distribution channels, a paradigm shift is at present beneath way with respect to the way life insurance coverage items are sold. It is transitioning from promoting items employing the distribution partner’s connection capabilities to experience-primarily based economic advisory capabilities. Today, an agent is armed with digital enablers to comprehend a customer’s economic desires, evaluate their present economic circumstance, and accordingly provide personalised options. This method also assists in applying a buyer-centric lens rather of just obtaining a item-centric method.
Vital transformation
Celebrity agents: At the finish of FY20, more than 2 million distributors have been working on the ground. Some of them have pivoted to leveraging the energy of the social media to create a competitive benefit more than their peers. They have understood that there is a huge prospective for lead generation on these platforms, apart from the luxury of continuous engagement. Establishing themselves as celebrity distributors, ideal from prospecting to lead scoring, they integrate their social media presence with an insurer’s digital platform for a superior brand recall for their consumers.
Building an integrated platform: Insurers deal with a lot of distributors. Changing buyer expectations and behaviour due to the speedy transformation is pushing insurers to collaborate with other players and create channels exactly where they can engage with shoppers in newer strategies. As multi-channel is the future, insurers have to be strategic, re-grading who they collaborate with and how they handle these partnerships. Most insurers are searching at converging all their partners onto a single platform to enhance efficiency and bridge the demand-provide gap.
Agent recruitment: Hiring the ideal talent is half the battle won for any organization. As a profession choice, insurance coverage sales is losing steam amongst today’s youth as superior options have pushed it down the pecking order. However, the influence designed by leading-performing distributors can’t be neglected. Insurers are mapping out the very important attributes of prosperous distributors and employing artificial intelligence to hand-choose candidates who show these attributes by way of written or oral tests.
InpositiveTech on the rise: Insurgents are difficult incumbents saddled with old course of action and systems with digitally-enabled easier items. Many InpositiveTech players are revolutionising the distribution game. For instance, InsuranceDrip, an automated mobile marketing and advertising program that sends social media posts on behalf of distributors, analyses post views and alerts them with regards to the exact same.
Bancassurance: Since the notification of the IRDA in 2002, which paved the way for banks in India to operate as corporate agents, bancassurance has emerged as an essential channel of distribution. Most insurance coverage corporations have integrated their items with a bank’s platform to provide shoppers a seamless journey in the course of the buy course of action. Currently, with the use of analytics and automated underwriting, insurance coverage corporations are collaborating with banks to provide customised presents, which they are integrating into bank systems to develop a differentiating element.
Future of insurance coverage distribution
Assisted distribution: Tech-enabled chatbots, virtual assistants and digital enablers such as WhatsApp would be future sales faces, focusing on immersive experiences. Many life insurers are experimenting with augmented and virtual reality to take shoppers by way of their future, highlighting the highly effective propositions presented by life insurance coverage items.
The Internet of Things (IoT): The business can leverage the wealth of details stored by wearable devices to provide customised insurance coverage items. Usage of the IoT and sophisticated machine understanding algorithms will open up new avenues to distribute items. In the future, numerous life insurers would companion with corporations supplying wearable devices.
Entry of Big Tech: The rise of e-commerce has been phenomenal and it is only anticipated to expand as life insurers evaluate prospects of tying up with majors such as Amazon and Flipkart. According to the World Insurance Report 2020 by Capgemini, 36% respondents stated they would take into account acquiring insurance coverage from Big Tech, compared to just 17% in the 2016 report.
The writing on the wall is clear. Today’s tech-savvy shoppers are focused on the ease of acquiring. They are prepared to take a likelihood with non-regular players. It is, consequently, essential for life insurers to be present on platforms preferred by their shoppers, and give a hassle-free, secure, safe and hassle-cost-free acquiring and claims course of action.
The author is chief distribution officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company