JOIN US Private life insurance major ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has expressed the large integration of technology in its day-to-day functioning and activities, besides a range of changes that has taken place in the way life insurance is viewed today.
Emphasising on the role of technology in the insurance sector, and ICICI Prudential’s push in the same realm, the company’s executive director, Puneet Nanda said, “Technology has changed the way we sell. Our company has developed a software, which can complete customers’ insurance documentation within minutes. In fact, 95 per cent of our new businesses are sold online today, which has contributed in a big way to the overall growth of the company.”
Referring to the way the idea of life insurance has evolved today, Nanda said, “The perception of customers, when it comes to the positioning of life insurance, is changing over a period of time. Earlier, life insurance was never projected as a protection instrument, but was seen as a long-term tax saving instrument. But now, the basic need of protection is gaining prominence.”
New trends
He went on to state that ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has off-late been coming out with schemes that try to accommodate the new trends, along with being more convenient. He further added that due to the growing inflation in the healthcare sector, people do need to protect themselves using insurance.
ICICI Prudential recently came up with an insurance scheme that covers both life and healthcare aspects of the client. “The product offers coverage of up to Rs 1 crore against 34 critical illnesses. It offers the nominees the option to receive the sum assured as a lumpsum or to receive it as a monthly income over a period of 10 years, in case of death of the policyholder. For the claims process, the requirements of documentation have been kept to the bare minimum,” Nanda told Deccan Herald.
Expressing that it is really important for insurance companies to inform their new clients about the products they are selling to them, he added, “It is after a year or so that people get a notice to pay the premium, and they start researching on the scheme they had purchased. And if they don’t like it anymore, they don’t continue with it. It brings down the persistence ratio,” he said. Persistence ratio in the Indian insurance sector hovers around 60 per cent, while for ICICI Prudential, it stands at 79 per cent.
Meanwhile, private life insurers in India are back on the growth track after the worries of the 2008 recession.
“The CAGR of the insurance sector in FY2015 has been 4-5 per cent, while the CAGR of private players has been arround 15-16 per cent. We at ICICI Prudential stand out with a YoY of 41 per cent in the area of new business premiums,” Nanda said, claiming that ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has a market share of 11.3 per cent on date.