Page 18 - Insurance Times April 2017 Special Issue on Newindia

them personalized and dynamic pricing. For example, 4. Post-payment experience: We have noticed that the
customers who are proven safe drivers, or take good maximum grievances and complaints in insurance are
care of their health, will be given additional discounts post-payment. Once payment is made, expectations of
as compare to other customers. quick service rise significantly. Insurers, and
intermediaries, are working on the following:
2. Outpatient health insurance products: All these years,  Robot-underwriting: Insurers will further their
thanks to the fragmented outpatient health care investments on artificial intelligence to bring in
industry, insurers have struggled to launch health deep efficiencies in underwriting as a function. For
insurance products that offer coverage beyond instance, machine reading and learning will
hospitalization expenses. Insurers are working on ensure that medical test reports for proposals are
various models that will leverage the growing instantly read, digitized and exceptions auto-
Smartphone penetration in India to create a viable and flagged to the underwriter. This will reduce the
comprehensive health care insurance product. App- turnaround time for the underwriting verdict after
based consumption can also help steer consumers to medical checks from the current average of one
curate network clinics, ensuring seamless, cashless, and week to one day.
paperless claims.
 KYC documentation: Integrations available with
Unique Identification Authority of India will ensure
3. Focus on-e-commerce based sale: The digital businesses instant check of Know Your Customer (KYC)
in India in the current shape and form depend too much documents. Insurance products that require
on contact centres for conversions. Brands today are mandatory KYC documentation will replace their
spending significant marketing money to attract relevant existing KYC processes with instant Aadhaar
traffic to their portals, and then they spend again to authentication.
drive conversions. The current online purchase journey,
the proposal form, and the questions are a near-exact  Advent of chat-bots: Customers will be provided
replica of the offline journey. However, it's a known fact round -the -clock support using chat-bots. Through
worldwide that consumers have widely different online customer accounts, customers will be able
expectations offline than when they are online. Insurers to make changes in their policy, increase or
will have to build mobile-first purchase journeys with decrease coverages, make renewal payments, and
smarter proposal forms, which are integrated with data request cancellation’s, completely replacing
platforms (Aadhaar, income tax, and health care paperwork in these post-sale services.
platforms, for example). Being cost -effective, pure digital  Improved claims experience: Insurers are already
distribution will open up a new sachet category of low using apps to improve customer experience. In
ticket insurance products. While these will have high 2017, we will see further improvement in claims
demand, they may not be viable for distribution through experience, while continuous control over
the traditional agency channels. fraudulent claims also improves.
Apart from providing claim status updates on their
apps, insurers are increasingly empowering
consumers to pre-inform about a cashless claim on
their app, so that there is faster admission in
network hospitals. Insurers will also introduce
paperless reimbursement claims.
 Premium collection: The recently launched Unified
Payments Interface (UPI) will open up innovative
premium collection models. For instance, insurers
will be able to use UPI- it works both on smart
phones and regular phones - to send renewal
payment requests through text messages.
Customers can simply click on the message
received, tap a few buttons and make an instant
renewal payment. 

18 The Insurance Times, April 2017

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