Page 287 - India Insurance Report 2023- BIMTECH

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range, is considered least important. These overall importance rankings translate directly into the relevance
for the next insurance purchase decision. There is also a high correlation between the importance and
the perceived engagement of insurers, indicating either that insurers have prioritized and communicated
effectively or that consumers have been adept at searching for an interpreting the information based on
their interests and priorities. The results provide better insights once Data is removed from the analysis.
In the tight grouping in the bottom left of Figure x, two areas of engagement, score lower in engagement
that their perceived importance: Investments and Claims Handling. Insurers should therefore further
intensify their efforts and communicate more effectively in both of these areas.

Customers hold differentiated views also regarding the individual insurance companies. Customer
portfolios of different companies express statistically significant different views of the importance of
sustainability and the relevance for their insurance purchase decision. The engagement of the insurers
correlates with the importance to the customers, indicating in general an effective approach to
sustainability. Company (blue) and company (green) show the highest positive and negative variation
from this correlation, perhaps indicating that some adjustments may be appropriate. The results for the
areas of engagement cluster by insurance company. The reasons for this clustering is not clear from this
research. One interpretation is that while customers have started to self-select into insurance companies,
and may be able to differentiate among them, they are not quite able to then further differentiate the
efforts by area of engagement. This in turn could be due to decreasing interest or that companies’
approach and communicate on sustainability topics on a broad front rather than focus on individual
issues. Market focus would suggest a more differentiated approach for insurers.

4.2.Research Insights

Our results broadly confirm the importance of Social issues both overall (e.g., Calabrese et al., 2016)
and specifically in insurance (Pugnetti et al., 2023). The insurance-specific results are also consistent in
the message that insurance companies need to emphasize core activities related to Investment management
and Claims handling, whereas involvement in e-Mobility seems to be less critical. The issue of Data
protection seems to be critical in Singapore, and it would be interesting in future research to understand
a) how this may apply to other markets and b) what more detailed customer expectations are with
respect to insurers’ activities. This may open interesting new product and service offerings for insurers.

Another interesting theoretical insight is in the consistent link between perceived engagement and
perceived importance of sustainability. This is consistent across age cohorts, gender, areas of engagement
and by company. While a positive message for insurers if true, this consistency may point at deeper
methodological or customer root causes and deserves to be further investigated in future research efforts.