Digital First to grow business

The digitisation hits insurance field and some of the country’s biggest insurers are moving to a digital-first approach, reducing the dependence on agents for selling an insurance product. Edelweiss Tokio, one of the insurance entrants, thinks of itself not as an insurance company but a technology company in the insurance business and that makes all the difference“, said the Chief Retail Officer Anup Seth. He added that the company has adopted a completely digital policy even for its offline channels such as agents and company distributors. “Digital has not only given the customer the power to access information as per his convenience. In addition, the use of digital and analytics tools like AI have helped improve the recommendations and enhance customer experience,” he said. “Offline businesses are depended on the agents’ competency and how he sees the product in his mind. Digital has taken that arbitrage away by giving him the clear idea. Agents no longer end up selling what they want to sell,” said an insurance industry professional. “The list of prospects is run through an algorithm; it tells you which five of the 40 you put are more likely to buy insurance if they are told a certain story. We have started to run a predictive model. However, this can be done only when the agent has information like estimated income range, age, life stage, etc,” said Manik Nangia, chief digital officer at Max Life Insurance. Now-a-days the companies are approaching digitisation in two ways – intending to increase online sales as well as focus on making their field executives digitally. A large variety algorithm and machine learning tools are used to predict what a customer might want before expressing their desire.