Exclusive | Re-branding does not alter our mission & commitment: Exide Life Insurance's Jain

Like every other sector in India, the life insurance space also witnesses stiff competition not only from the presence of other players, but also hurdles put up by evolving customers. In an age to stay upbeat with the changing consumer demands and desires, life insurance companies offer ‘at home services’, internet payment solutions and other added services to gain customer attraction and thus build satisfying customer base. Indians however, are known to be supremely careful of monies and specifically cautious while planning and managing the insurances. Given this situation, building ‘trust’ with an Indian customer tops the priority chart with most players in the country. Also, having customers to leave their previous insurance company associations and join their own is another major task that insurance companies face today.

In such a growingly complex situation, ING Vysya Life Insurance has now become Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd.

Adgully caught up with Kshitij Jain, MD & CEO, Exide Life Insurance to know more about the newly branded company, hurdles the sector faces and more.

The re-branding move comes as a result of a global restructuring exercise, where ING Group decided to exit the insurance business from Asia Pacific, not just India. Post this decision the ING Group N.V. sold its stake in ING Vysya Life Insurance to Exide Industries Limited in March 2013. While Exide Industries Limited (Exide Industries) has been a major shareholder of ING Vysya Life Insurance Company Limited since 2005; in March 2013 it acquired 100% ownership of the company. “Subsequent to the change in ownership, we decided to change the name of the company to Exide Life Insurance Company Limited to reflect our pride of being associated with a rich brand heritage of over 100 years in India”, said Jain.

Sharing five key reasons for calling themselves Exide Life Insurance Jain stated, “Firstly, it reflects the ownership structure, secondly, Exide’s 100-year old brand heritage in India, third - familiarity across both metro and non-metro markets, followed by values associated with the brand are trust and long lasting and lastly - Pan India appeal that will enable salience not just in South but across India. As you may be aware ‘ING Vysya’ brand enjoys significant equity in the Indian market especially in South India. Exide being a very strong household name will help us build on the equity we have created so far. We believe the name ‘Exide Life Insurance’ will help us build our business by making us become a nationally relevant brand”.

Shedding light on the brand mission, Jain explained, “Interestingly, during our research we found that Indians are living longer. Since Independence due to change in various health parameters (for better) we are living longer and this will only continue to change on a higher side. The average life expectancy has gone up from 32 years to 68 years since independence. A longer life-span therefore heightens consumer anxiety – it does not diminish it. It means greater demand for long-term funds in a consumer’s lifetime and it does not take away from the fact that the head of the family needs to provide protection for other members.  This is where Exide Life Insurance steps in. The brand’s mission is to help you prepare financially for a long and happy life. As this is in our culture, we always wish people for a happy long life”.

Jain mentions that the positioning of ‘We help you prepare financially for a long and happy life’ is derived from an intrinsic truth of the category – forced savings that help you prepare for the long-term. “With this positioning, we are sharply highlighting the fact that the long term has become much longer. No life insurance company has understood this and communicated it because longer you live, better you need to be prepared to live life better and happier”, he added.

An elated Jain said that the new logo is a visual identity that tells a brand new story of a bright future, backed by a rich heritage, it retains the legacy of the ‘Exide’ word mark, reflects warmth through the letterforms of the word life and represents an optimistic future with the simple, yet powerful ‘Exide Life Sun’. “The ‘Exide’ word mark, with its bold chamfered upper-case letterforms creates an instant visual connect with the parent brand ‘Exide’. In addition to this, the colour red represents solidity, dynamism, energy and passion. The word ‘Life’ reflects caring, gentle human cues that complement the boldness of the Exide letterforms. The colour blue connotes stability and security. The ‘Exide Life Sun’ is a unique express of a universally recognized symbol of ‘life’ and ‘optimism’”, he added.

Jain firmly stated that this re-branding is only a change of name and logo of the Company and has no impact on the day-to-day operations of the company. The company’s commitment to its customers, partners and employees remains’ unchanged and in no way alters the business model and policies at Exide Life Insurance.

The re-branding exercise was done by Ray and Keshavan- The Brand Union, which was the principal brand partner who helped create the new brand identity and architecture; while L&K Saatchi and Saatchi were the main Line advertising agency which worked on the corporate brand campaign.

Sharing the brief given to these agencies, Jain said, “The brief shared with the agency was to position the new brand as a nationally relevant keeping in mind the essence of the brand ‘to help people prepare financially for a long and happy life’. We also stated that the advertising campaign must address the following key communication areas: Communicate that this a mere name change of a 12 year plus business that today serves 10 lakh plus customers in over 200 cities in India and secondly, benefit from the long standing heritage of brand “Exide” that stands for key values of being dependable and long standing. These values tie in very well with our brand essence. The biggest journey any of us undertake in life is the journey of life itself. And with each generation, this journey is getting longer. And as with every other journey, when there's someone you know by your side, all the unseen difficulties become so much easier to overcome. That was the simple insight behind the campaign”.

Speaking about the marketing and promoting activities that they plan to release for this announcement, Jain said, “Given that the foremost task we have is to build brand salience with greater focus on creating relevance of the brand in context of Life Insurance, Exide Life Insurance recently launched its first high intensity advertising and marketing campaign. Keeping in line with the brand essence, the campaign communicates a key message that to ensure your long journey of life is a happy one; you need someone known by your side. And Exide Life Insurance is the long standing and trusted companion who will help you make your life a happy one”.

The media mix for the campaign consists of TV, Out of Home and Digital with TV playing the role of the lead medium and thus with spend allocations in the same order. “The media mix has been arrived at by considering our existing customer base and distribution reach. Spread over 30 days, the TV campaign has been released in 6 Indian Languages whereas the OOH campaign is in 10 Indian languages across 200 locations”, he added.

Talking on the kind of focus on digital and mobile for both business and marketing activities Jain stated that digital will play an important role in engaging with the target audience using a mix of social, video and search platforms. They intend to use Digital to support the main communication message that will be relayed through TV.  “We at Exide Life Insurance have been participating in the digital boom using multiple platforms. We look at digital as a self-sustainable ecosystem for our critical stakeholders namely customers, advisors and employees. After gaining experience over past few years, we realized that having a robust digital destination like a well-equipped website will be Key to pursue our digital endeavors. So we have invested in developing an intuitive, interactive and an intelligent website. Keeping in view the customer’s needs we have made everything available that customer seeks. An appealing layout and easy to find information makes navigation look like child’s play. Couple this with some amazing customer friendly features like an intelligent, well-structured product segment, robust knowledge center that talks all the things about insurance, simplified online claim filing and premium payment interface, comprehensive customer services, and planning tools that help you plan your financial futures well, the website has it all covered. The icing on the cake? It is extremely friendly and gets along well with all devices like smartphones, phablets, tablets, desktops and laptops. As a brand we are looking at captivating, educating and creating loyalty with our digital marketing efforts. Our Exide Life Insurance Mobile app for our customers and advisors is our first step in the mobile application space, while we see a larger potential in this space. We are looking at actively using videos to drive customer education by explaining complex insurance concepts in a simple engaging manner”.

Sharing his thoughts on changing time and technological developments have influenced the way insurance is being sold changed, Jain said, “Life Insurance has traditionally been sold through the agency and bank assurance channels. Buyers too have depended on the advice given by the insurance agents. However, with the popularity of internet and advancement in technology, a phenomenon known as ROBO (Research Online Buy Offline) has gained popularity among Indians. While bulk of Life Insurance buying still happens offline, existing policy holders increasingly are paying their renewal premiums online. Over the last couple of years, many companies have started selling term insurance online where the focus has largely been on affordability of the premiums. Online sales are not yet contributing significantly to the top line of the companies. As a company, we focus a lot on enabling our policy holders on helping them manage their policies better using a special online self-service portal. In addition to paying premium online, a policy holder can request for address change, download premium tax certificate, switch funds in case of unit linked plans”.