Page 21 - LIFE INSURANCE TODAY Novemver 2017

assessments based on yoga routines. relationship management (CRM), busi- and more insurers will start “investing
The idea is to initially assign health ness process management (BPM) and in digital tools to make the process of
levels ranging from one to five (five distributor management,” Bathwal buying insurance easy” for this seg-
being the highest) and then monitor explained. He added that the company ment. He cited the example of
physical activity by counting steps also has a customized knowledge US-based Oscar Insurance Corp. as a
walked or calories burned so that management system (KMS) deployed good digital model for Indian
‘Health Rewards’ can be given to cus- on the cloud for agile sales training, so firms to study. “That company is fa-
tomers from time to time. The maxi- that the agents do not need to carry mous for really trying to capture the
mum reward comprises 2.5% pre- any physical paper or brochures for millennial mindset through a simple,
mium value per month or 30% of pre- sales visits. The KMS includes audios easy-to-use and transparent app inter-
mium being given back in a year. and videos about the products, fre- face geared to attract young people,”
quently asked questions and other he noted.
Bathwal asserted that ABHI ap- material to help them sell.
proached health insurance with a Furthermore, while use of wearables
“fresh perspective” right from the While ABHI tries to “digitize every and incentivizing customers for their
start and laid a lot of emphasis on piece of information” about custom- physical activities or healthy habits in
technology usage and integration. To ers and policies, one area where chal- the insurance sector is “popular in
begin with, ABHI launched mutliple lenges exist is the still low level of digi- countries such as Singapore, USA and
ways to reach customers—including a tization in hospitals—particularly small parts of Europe,” the problem in India,
website, mobile app, tie-up with five and medium ones— and the lack of an besides low penetration of these de-
banks, an agent network of 9,000 and intermediary “health data exchange or vices, according to Moduga, is that
a tele-sales team— and integrated switch” between hospitals and insur- there is no significant platform that
them through technology for “better ers, unlike in the West. “There are allows this data to be easily trans-
customer experience.” some initiatives like Remedinet,” ferred to the insurance database.
Bathwal said, but it might take “five What most health insurers are cur-
According to Bathwal, 80% the policy years or so” for the level of data inte- rently busy with is to reduce opera-
sales through these multiple modes gration between hospitals and insur- tional costs by using technologies such
happen on the company’s “technology ers to make a substantial impact. as robotic process automation, he
platform”. concluded.
“Data integration is clearly a problem
What the company has done is put area in the Indian healthcare ecosys- ABHI, meanwhile, is also focusing on
together a core tech team of about 20 tem at the moment,” opined Ashwin reducing the procedural pain associ-
people who work with several special- Moduga, research manager for health ated with hospitalization in India, es-
ist information technology (IT) solu- insights in the Asia Pacific, Interna- pecially in terms of patients and their
tion providers to constantly integrate tional Data Corp. (IDC). He also be- relatives running from pillar to post for
the additional solutions provided by lieves that health insurance compa- different tests, medicines, paperwork,
them into its “core application”. “The nies in India “will continue to face for etc. The company has introduced vir-
base digital platform is ours. We have some time” the challenge of how to tual care managers—assistants avail-
bought some technology products but get millennials to buy health insur- able on call from Monday to Saturday,
integrated them internally or in- ance. “If you look at millennials buy- from 9am to 7pm—to “create a bet-
house. For instance, our core health ing health insurance, it is not showing ter claim experience for the policy-
insurance application is a product the growth it should be showing,” he holders and their families. This “first-
called HealthBuzz, which we bought pointed out. of-kind initiative”, concluded Bathwal,
from a solution provider. Similarly, we makes the whole process convenient
have bought products for customer As such, according to Moduga, more for customers. (Source : Mint)

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.

Life Insurance Today November 2017 21

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