Page 35 - Insurance Times January 2023

nies and professionals within the space. When we looked Insurance, Employee Benefits, Claims Consulting, etc, which
outside of India, we found that practically every other large have led to higher insurance adoption and better customer
country or region had an InsurTech association. experience.
Hence, we started IIA as a not for profit which brings to- Employee Benefit startups are making employee healthcare
gether the entire insurtech eco-system in India onto a single benefits accessible through tech-based platforms which sim-
platform. In the 2 years since our inception, we have plify purchase and servicing of policies, provide employers
touched 180+ members. Our diverse member base includes with claims and analytics dashboards, and provide access to
startups, (re)insurers, insurance intermediaries, software digital health services for holistic employee health manage-
companies, insurance focused IT services companies, and ment. InsurTechs are also focussing on offering embedded
service providers. insurance solutions for gadgets, cars, healthcare purchases,
etc. Some InsurTech players are working on building insur-
Some of our objectives are:
ance infrastructure pipes and APIs, which can connect digi-
Facilitate partnerships between startups and the
tal ecosystem companies with insurers, while providing sup-
broader insurance industry such as insurers, reinsurers,
port on compliance, marketing, operations etc.
service providers, and investors
The growth in the number of InsurTech companies has also
Help Indian InsurTech companies to access global mar-
resulted in attracting excellent talent from data science,
kets
technology, UI/UX, and Product Management into the In-
Connect InsurTech startups with insurance industry dian insurance industry. In the next couple of years we can
experts, not just from within India but also from out- expect more Indian InsurTechs to become world-class SaaS
side India and analytics companies.
Publish and promote thought leadership
Q. Do you think Insurtech will help to significantly
Promote initiatives which use technology to increase
change the underwriting and claims experience
the insurance penetration across different socio-eco-
and make the customer journey more pleasant?
nomic segments of India in a more equitable way.
A. Currently, insurance as an industry lags other consumer
facing industries when it comes to providing a digitally driven
Q. How has been the journey of Insurtechs in
customer experience. This is more true in areas such as
India so far? Which are the key segments/areas
underwriting and claims, which have not been digitised to
in the insurance Industry where Insurtech com- the same extent as distribution.
panies are focusing the most. InsurTechs can enable insurers with technology platforms
A. Prior to 2019, the Indian InsurTech scenario was domi- in underwriting and claims which enable higher process
nated by distribution focused InsurTechs, which are now automation resulting in faster processing, improved accu-
some of the largest insurance intermediary players today - racy of decision making, and reduce human error.
for instance Policybazaar and Policyboss. However, in the
Some of the solutions being built by Insurtech players in-
last 2 years, we've seen a number of new InsurTech com-
clude data platforms to leverage the vast amount of data
panies come up in India in other areas such as Embedded
points being generated today. Examples of new data pipe-
lines which can be used for underwriting include wearable
The growth in the number of devices such as smartwatches, IoT enabled devices, con-
InsurTech companies has also nected cars etc. Insurtech companies have already started
bringing together these data points for enabling faster and
resulted in attracting excellent talent more accurate decision making for underwriters.
from data science, technology, UI/UX, Similarly, it is expected that insurance companies will build
and Product Management into the deeper partnerships with Insurtech players for using these
data points for automating adjudication of claims, faster
Indian insurance industry.
claims processing, fraud detection etc.

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