Insurance Cos invest heavily in cyber security as digital push intensifies

Shrugging off the disruptions of last year, businesses and agencies are looking for a strong revival in 2021. Adgully – as part of our annual TRENDING NOW endeavour – has been presenting the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of 2020.

Vivek Chaturvedi, CMO, Digit Insurance, sees demand for health insurance products sustaining this year, as well increased awareness for health and wellness, health related insurance products amongst the consumers.

Outlook for the General Insurance industry in 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic had a dual impact on the GI industry. On the one hand, due to the reduced purchasing power and lower sales of cars and other assets, the motor insurance industry saw a de-growth in premium. On the other hand, with the increased awareness for health and wellness, health related insurance products saw a good growth.

In this year, too, this demand for health insurance products is seen to be sustaining, especially with a deadly second wave washing over us, with more and more relevant insurance products related to health coming into the forefront. Also, there has been a huge shift in consumer behaviour towards digital insurance. Hence this year, together with the regulator’s initiatives to encourage digitisation, majority of insurers will be seen to adopt this transformation and build digital capacities.

The focus for the industry will also be to build a strong financial position and good risk management practices. In terms of claims, more and more insurers will be focusing efforts in offering a zero touch, virtual claims process. With more digital capabilities being built, GI companies are also expected to be heavily investing in enhancing cyber security technologies.

Expectations from the campaign

India is a highly under-penetrated insurance market, therefore with Virat Kohli, the youth icon who is loved by every age group in India, we hope the awareness for insurance goes up.

For Digit, since this is our first national campaign, we hope to see a higher recall for the brand. From a message point of view, we wanted to highlight that Digit is an almost 5-star-customer rated insurance, with the trust of 1.5 crore Indians. (Rated 5/5 on Facebook as of March 18, 2021, 4.6/5 on Google as on February 28, 2021, 1.5 crore customers since Digit began operations in 2017.)

The customer rating reflects the customers’ satisfaction with our service, something we have always tried to keep high standards for. Especially in times when people generally use social media to rant and criticise brands/ companies, we feel this ‘almost 5-star-rating’ is a very important indicator of good customer experience.

Key learnings from 2020

Be accessible to your customers: Whether someone goes on social or comes to the website or talks to their agent, they should be able to reach the company. And when they do, the resolution should be fast and comprehensive. And if we can make this experience wow for the customer, we don’t need any other advertising. In our case apart from 50,000 people we serviced over calls, 12,000 were also serviced through WhatsApp in the last 6 months.

Have one voice: Brands can be present omni-channel, but all channels should live to the purpose of the brand. Therefore, communication has to be in sync across channels, that is, messaging, tonality and objective.

Be consistent & relevant: Have your ears close to the customer, know what they want, act on it quick and be relevant when you talk to them. This is obvious for any good relationship in real life as well, same goes between a company & their customer. Launching COVID related health products was something which came through early detection of what people wanted and led us to cover 2 million lives eventually.