For Edelweiss Tokio Life, innovation is a habit: Abhishek Gupta

Edelweiss Tokio life has launched a new campaign – #MeriMarziKaPlan – featuring ace cricketer Mithali Raj, to introduce its new product – Flexi Savings Plan. It is an innovative product, where the insurance plan can be customised as per customer requirements. Customers are at the centre of research for introducing and innovating on new products at Edelweiss Tokio Life. The new product lets the customer adjust the timing of the benefit pay out according to their Marzi or own will. Edelweiss is known to set trends in the industry with its innovative line of products to fulfil the customer’s emerging needs.

The Flexi Savings Plan takes Personalisation at the core of offering to customers, with the customer behaviour and expectation changing at a fast pace. With this product the target customers are those who are beginning on their financial journey. The driving force behind introducing this new product is the fact that it is easier to plan for financial resources for the short term but difficult for the longer term. Personalisation has been an essential part of the customer journey since the inception of the life insurance sector and the digital revolution has further accelerated the pace of the need for personalisation for the customers.

Edelweiss Tokio Life aims to fulfil this need of personalisation by understanding the changing customer requirements backed by a digital upsurge and a longer term vision. In the campaign video, Mithali Raj is shown to ask about the different savings plan according to her financial needs to her financial planner.

In conversation with Adgully for their Talking Insights column, Abhishek Gupta, CMO, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, speaks at length about the #MeriMarziKaPlan campaign, how the company has been keeping personalisation at the core of its business strategy, changes in consumer behaviour regarding insurance planning, and more.

What is the objective of the #MeriMarziKaPlan campaign? Who are you targeting this film? 

Before I dive into the objective behind this campaign, let me first elaborate what Edelweiss Tokio Life’s approach has been towards Product Design as well as our recent offering Flexi Savings Plan.

With most products that we offer, our goal is quite simple – addressing the unarticulated needs of our customers. This endeavour reflects in our consistent track record of delivering innovative products to our customers. We have a robust insight gathering process which includes the customer into the product designing process, which in turn helps us create insurance solutions that match the customer’s Marzi. Our recent offering Flexi Savings Plan is no different. It is a participating product, which offers an innovative optional feature to let the customer change the timing of benefit pay out as many times as required to match their requirements. Simply put, the plan can be customized as per unique individual requirements.

This brings me to why we chose the messaging of #MeriMarziKaPlan. The purpose has been dual – it is an ode to our overall approach to Product Design which has helped us consistently stay relevant to customers’ Marzi and also underlines our foray into the Personalisation space with the new product – Flexi Savings Plan.

With Flexi Savings Plan, we are targeting those who are beginning to start out in the financial planning journey. We have created a plan that changes as their needs change and can match up to their financial requirements no matter the life stage.

How did you arrive at the insight and what was the brief to the creative agency?

As mentioned before, we have a robust insight gathering process, which allows us to stay attuned to the customer challenges. Our advisors and distribution partners are a great source of feedback mechanism because they directly interact with customers and understand their pain points far better than we do. We make use of these insights to arrive at the solution. For customer insight that steered us to this product was the fact that most of us struggle with longer term financial planning. It is easier for all of us to estimate what our financial needs will be in the shorter term. But, if you have to predict how much financial resources you will need, say 15-20 years from now, you can only rely on guesswork. This has been creating a big roadblock for our customers when planning their finances for the future. So, we wanted to create a solution that understands this customer pain point and can help them circumvent this shortcoming that existed at the time in most life insurance solutions.

Our brief to the creative agency was quite simple. We wanted to be direct in underlining the uniqueness of this product, while delivering the message that personalisation is officially here in the Life Insurance sector. And, I believe nothing summarises personalisation better than #MeriMarziKaPlan. When we had the thought in place, we went back to the drawing board to figure out who can anchor this thought and make it more memorable. The answer was a no brainer – Mithali Raj. She is the exemplification of ‘Meri Marzi.’ With the power of sheer will, she has broken records and put Women’s India Cricket on the map.

How important is personalisation in a low involvement category like insurance? What strategy do you follow here?

I am not quite sure why we as an industry talk about personalisation as a novel concept. The fact of the matter is that Life Insurance has probably been one of the few industries which has heavily relied on personalisation when it comes to distribution. When you really think back, since the inception of this sector, personalisation has been an integral part of the customer journey, because distribution has been dependent primarily on advisors who have had to deploy a personalised approach when interacting with customers.

Now, with the advent of the digital era, we as an industry are only redefining what personalisation means and trying to integrate it into various aspects of the business. What was limited to distribution is now becoming more pervasive in terms of pricing, product design, and more. Personalisation is now becoming the basis of insurance innovation and helping create differentiation for the younger breed of insurance companies.

For Edelweiss Tokio Life, innovation is a habit and we are viewing personalisation as one of the vectors under innovation. We have already seen personalization being used effectively in the general insurance space through products like pay as you go motor insurance. With Flexi Savings Plan, we have also officially marked our entry into this space.

How is the life insurance outlook looking post the pandemic? Any significant behaviour changes that you have noticed?

The Life Insurance industry has a robust growth outlook in the medium to long term, because we believe that the awareness and consideration of this product category will incrementally improve from here on. The recent bout of awareness due to the Covid-19 pandemic has supported the sectoral growth so far, but a lot more needs to be done to convert customer interest into actual purchase action. There is undoubtedly a massive market opportunity, as our insurance penetration numbers suggest.

The digital explosion in recent years provides a unique opportunity for younger and more technologically-savvy companies like us to tap into that market potential. The noteworthy change in customer disposition certainly helps our cause as an industry. What the industry will have to adapt to at a fast pace is the customer demand of personalization and customization. Customers are seeing personalisation in all quarters of their digital life and therefore it is only natural that expectation is translating to their financial purchases too.

How do you plan to engage with your audience for your new campaign? 

We have been far more keen on the digital medium in the recent years and have made incrementally higher investments there. With this campaign, we will continue our focus on the digital medium, with social media being our primary focus. We are also looking at programmatic buying from publishers and OTT platforms as our target audience is present there.