Page 23 - Life Insurance Today January-June 2020

paced adoption of digitisation with a huge push from the financial advisors, insurance agents or brokers. However,
Government accelerating it further. This situation, coupled a recent EY survey found that customers in South Africa
with the pricing arbitrage, ease of access and transactions, are more likely to use digital channels to check and
and convenience is creating a formidable positioning for compare policies than their UK counterparts. The challenge
digitisation in consumers' minds. There are now more than remains of converting the browsing into a successful sale
125 million active users of e-Commerce. It is estimated that still prevails in these markets. While agents and brokers still
around 30% of insurance-related purchase decisions are dominate the industry in most emerging markets, our
now influenced by the digital channel. strategies aim to help them strengthen relationships with
customers in the ever-changing digital environment.
A similar level of uniformity between products' benefits,
language, terminology, integrity of process and claim Roadmap for digitization:
handling is the holy grail of the insurance industry - waiting
A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report says in every area
to exhale and claim its true great place in the global
insurance community in terms of its penetration exceeding of insurance, traditional insurers can use the internet,
mobile technology and social media to fend off new rivals
6% of India's GDP in the near future. Although brokers
and get ahead of long-time competitors. The report says
continue to dominate the insurance market across India,
the industry is quick to embrace digital solutions. As companies should build their digital platform on three parts
of the value chain: Internal operations, go-to-market
customer needs evolve, insurers struggle to strike the right
strategies and risk. For internal operations, the benefits of
balance between their legacy operations which contribute
to large revenue and the opportunities that the new digital digitisation starts from straight-through processing, which
lowers the insurers' transaction costs? For example, in
landscape will generate.
health insurance, digitisation of operations involves
Most customers still purchase insurance policies through developing interfaces for providers, such as physicians and

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