Page 30 - Insurance Times April 2020

Through our marathons and other financial planning and that every individual should have it.
Recently in a positive step, the Life Insurance Council
grassroots sporting initiatives, we have rolled out a 360-degree life insurance awareness

been spreading a positive message campaign with the tagline 'Sabse pehle life insurance'
which seeks to drive home the message that as one starts
which has helped us to break through the journey of financial planning, investing in life
insurance is the first step one should take.
the clutter and establish a deeper and At IDBI Federal, we take misselling of policies very

stronger connect with consumers. seriously and have a Pre-Issuance Call process in place
where we personally call every customer before the policy
is issued to ensure that they have thoroughly understood
This has dealt us a blow as the share from IDBI Bank the policy that they have purchased.
amounted to around 50% of our overall business. To
counter this, we have been focusing on incubating and 4. How would you differentiate IDBI Federal from other
growing our proprietary channels including agents, direct, players in the market?
online, group and brokers. We are also looking to further For years, the life insurance industry has been selling
leverage our relationship with Federal Bank and hopefully products on the basis of fear and uncertainty. We took a
grow it even more. conscious stance to break away from this approach and
focus instead on health and fitness. Through our
2 How IDBI Federal is leveraging new technology to marathons and other grassroots sporting initiatives, we
increase its distribution reach and provide better customer have been spreading a positive message which has helped
service? us to break through the clutter and establish a deeper and
We have consistently worked on enhancing customer stronger connect with consumers.
experience and improving operational efficiency through
extensive use of technology. Technology has quite 5. Rapidly changing consumer behaviour is reshaping the
comprehensively changed the way we operate, both at the consumer preference in the insurance industry. How is
front- and back-end. We have completely automated the your company gearing up for this challenge?
sales process for our frontline sales team through our We have adopted digital in a big way in order to serve our
tablet-based application – 'On the Go'. Last year, we customers better. We use predictive analysis to segment
launched the Pre-Issuance Verification of Customer app on customers so that we can customise our communication
our sales mobility tabs which has helped to reduce mis- to customers based on their profiles. Going ahead, we
selling as well as improve turnaround time of policy hope to further sharpen our communication by using
issuance. We also use an email BOT for responding to more of data, analytics and artificial intelligence.
customer queries that has helped to reduce the
turnaround time significantly. Through the use of data 6. Recently, IDBI Federal has organized Kolkata Marathon
analytics and business intelligence, we have also for 4 time. What was the theme behind associating with
th
sharpened and customised our communication to the event?
customers. Our overarching organisational purpose is to empower
people to create the life and lifestyle of their choice. We
3. Misselling has been causing damage to the growth of the believe that in order to truly create the lifestyle one
insurance industry a lot. How do you handle desires, one needs to focus on both, financial fitness and
misselling of policies? physical fitness.
There are two levels of awareness. One is being genuinely
aware about life insurance, and the other is having a Our focus in the near future is going to be
certain amount of awareness about life insurance along on incubating and growing our proprietary
with some misconceptions about it. To prevent misselling
of policies which is a serious issue facing our industry, life channels like agency, DST, online and group
insurance companies need to step up and create far more in a smart and aggressive manner.
awareness among consumers. We need to educate them
about the necessity of life insurance as a crucial tool for Continued to Page 37

The Insurance Times, April 2020