“Today, differentiation in insurance lies in a state-of-the-art technology function”

Manipal Cigna Health insurance Company Ltd (formerly known as Cigna TTK Health Insurance Company Ltd) is a joint venture between Manipal Group, an eminent player in the field of healthcare delivery and higher education in India, Cigna Corporation, a global health services company with over 200 years of experience, and Indian conglomerate TTK Group. Manipal Cigna is headquartered out of Mumbai and has 47 branch offices covering major metros and towns.

Since launch in 2014, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance has carved a successful niche for itself in the Indian market, owning the ‘Health and Wellness’ space. The company recently launched their digitally-led campaign, ‘Savdhani Ke Saath, Health Insurance Zaroori Hai’, which focuses primarily on ways COVID-19 fatigue has crept into people’s lives and how people flouting COVID-19 safety guidelines can endanger themselves.

Adgully spoke to Sapna Desai, Head - Marketing and Online Sales (ManipalCigna Health Insurance Company Limited) on their campaign strategy, changes in the health insurance sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic, setting up a future ready technology architecture to enable quick integration with external partners, and much more.

What was your objective behind the two recent ad films with the theme ‘Savdhani Ke Saath, Health Insurance Zaroori Hai’? How did you arrive at this concept and what is your end objective and expectations and from these films?

Today, we live in an age of rising medical cost with a greater tendency of falling prey to ailments or viral infections anytime, anywhere. Take the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. Laxity in adherence to precautions can prove to be detrimental to public health. Thus, our digitally-led campaign, ‘Savdhani Ke Saath, Health Insurance Zaroori Hai’, focuses primarily on ways COVID-19 fatigue has crept into our lives and how people flouting COVID-19 safety guidelines can endanger us all. The campaign leverages an insight that even if you are cautious and follow all COVID-19 safety protocol, the risk of catching COVID-19 or other infectious diseases is high because of the behaviour of people who might be carriers and who are following the protocols in an incorrect manner. For example, wearing a mask, but on the chin and not covering the nose. Thus, based on this consumer insight we created the campaign – ‘Savdhani Ke Saath, Health Insurance Zaroori Hai’ (Along with precautions, Health Insurance is essential).

What are the long-term implications of COVID-19 for the insurance industry? Did you see any rise in the growth of health insurance policy last year? If so, what kind of audience made enquiries and took policy covers?

Due to COVID-19, there is an increase in awareness among consumers about buying health insurance policies. Today, people are also proactively looking for higher health insurance cover, and renewal has improved with increasing upsell trend. Therefore, in a relatively under-insured market like ours, we believe COVID-19 has been a biggest advertiser to reinforce the fact that Health Insurance Zaroori Hai. Thus against this backdrop, we believe that the health insurance sector will continue to grow in the times to come due to increased awareness and demand, rising affluence in India, and the higher prevalence of lifestyle diseases. And we at Manipal Cigna Health Insurance, stand committed to champion affordable, predictable, and simple health insurance products and services to address the opportunities, remain agile to our customers’ evolving needs and expand our market opportunity.

Your sales network partners are your strong pillars to sell and market your policies. How have you been engaging with them in the last few months and ensuring that their morale is very high and updating them on the various schemes and policies?

Manipal Cigna Health Insurance has been on the top of the game through continuous innovation in its product and processes, driving distribution efficiency, digital enablement, and customer service. COVID-19 has led to digital acceleration and adoption. Social distancing is also now making customers adapt to online purchase and online service. This presents an opportunity for change of business models – from traditional face to face to phygital models, which combines digital tools and strong customer relationships. Our agents and other distribution teams have upskilled and adopted digital methods of marketing, sales and service. While in the insurance industry, technology and digitisation has always existed, but with technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (MI) and Block chain, it holds huge opportunity to disrupt the customer onboarding and servicing and making it more personalised and smooth purchase and service experience.

Customer centricity is the backbone of any financial brand. With social distancing and WFH policies followed, how are the needs and grievances of the customers addressed without any flaw and seamlessly?

True to our ‘customer-first’ philosophy, we are constantly in touch with our policyholders digitally 24X7 to provide them uninterrupted essential services.

Keeping in line with our commitment of doing more for customers in times of illness and wellness, we have also launched ‘WeCare’, a holistic Infectious Disease Management programme. The primary purpose of this initiative is to help protect our customers’ health from common infectious diseases and ensure that they have access to a knowledge series regarding what is best for their health, when it comes to preparing for and combating a host of infectious diseases. There is a 24×7 doctor helpline for any infectious diseases such as fever, flu, diarrhoea and others with doctor home visits based on our expert advice. Further, to help customers better understand the state of their health, regular detailed tele-follow-ups are done to check on a patient’s condition, offer advice and provide assistance in hospitalisation, if required. We are confident that our customers will benefit from this program and true to our mission, we will continue to partner closely with our customers to improve their health and well-being, so they can enjoy greater peace of mind knowing they will get the care that truly meets their needs, when they need it.

How do you plan to amplify all your brand films on media? Will digital be your frontline medium to engage with your audience? How do you plan to measure the effectiveness of the campaign?

The medium of choice of all our brand films right now is digital. On digital, we use a combination of owned and paid channels to circulate the films. Social media is an integral part of getting our messages to the right audience, so we place a lot of importance on the correct targeting. From time to time we explore tie-ups with influencers, digital innovations, along with new social media trends to try to capture audience’s attention. Digital will continue to be our frontline medium to engage with audiences, as it provides flexibility to target various sets of audience and also by language preference and geography. Every brand campaign has a different purpose behind it. Thus, to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, we use a combination of the usual metrics of reach, engagement, website traffic, hand raisers and brand search etc., along with needle movement on individual campaign goals.

Going forward, what’s going to be your growth strategy for 2021 in the new normal? Are you looking at expanding your presence in Tier 2 & 3 markets?

At Manipal Cigna, we are committed to deliver on our mission, which is to improve the health, well-being, and peace of mind of those we serve. Keeping in line with our customer-first philosophy, we are continuously developing new products and services, which enable us to match our customer needs more clearly. While we have a number of areas for action, but the key areas of focus are to create an outside-in marketing organisation that drives customer value to fully enable profitable business growth. We will do this by building on Manipal Cigna’s brand story across consumer segments; strengthening customer access, experience and direct sales; and through increased media, customer and employee engagement strategy and tactics.

Over the years, we have built a strong multi-channel distribution network across Tier 1, 2 and 3 towns in India. So, as we move into 2021 and beyond, we do see an increase in both need and demand for health insurance products and services and we at Manipal Cigna Health Insurance stand committed to reach some of the untapped markets in the country to address the opportunities, remain agile to our customers evolving needs and expand our market opportunity.

Health insurance category has so many players fighting for their pie in a competitive market. How is Manipal Cigna Health bringing in that differentiation in your products and services to attract customers? What has been the core positioning of the brand to woo customers to sustain the growth on a continuous basis?

Since the launch in 2014, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance has carved a successful niche for itself in the Indian market, owning the ‘Health and Wellness’ space. Our purpose is to be the champions for our customers and our communities that we serve. Thus, our involvement with our customers goes deeper than handling insurance claims. We are committed to helping the people we serve lead healthier lives and to make every day experiences easy and reliable in ways that our customers find us proactive, personal and empathetic. Remaining true to our mission and our customer-first philosophy helps us to meet our customers’ evolving needs, sustain the growth on a continuous basis and expand our market opportunity.

Today, differentiation in insurance lies in a state-of-the-art technology function. The current pandemic has only emphasised this need further. Thus, to undertake this next-generation technology transformation, at Manipal Cigna we will strive to shape our technology strategy, we will build new age capabilities to meet the ever-changing customer needs and lastly, we will set up a future ready technology architecture to enable quick integration with external partners.