Rs. 100-cr campaign to be launched for Life Insurance awareness

The life insurance industry is getting readying to launch a Rs 100-crore multimedia campaign aimed at spreading awareness around life insurance and removing misconceptions around the products. Several life insurers, including the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), have committed funds for the campaign, which is a brainchild of the Life Insurance Council’s Insurance Awareness Committee. The campaign is expected to be unveiled in January. “The core objective of the campaign would be to ensure that life insurance as a category is understood better and drive home the point that it can play a key role in a family’s goal-oriented financial planning strategy,” said Rajesh Sud, chairman of the committee and outgoing executive VC and MD, Max Life Insurance. Other members of the committee include ICICI Prudential Life, Star Union Daiichi Life and Tata-AIA Life. The committee is evaluating various agencies to aid the rollout of the programme. It is intended to be a multimedia campaign covering television, radio, digital and PR platforms. ‘Insurance Zaroori hai’ is one of the taglines being considered to convey the message, two CEOs who have committed funds for the campaign indicated. Sud dismissed the idea of the campaign being inspired by Association of Mutual Funds of India’s ‘Mutual Funds Sahi Hai’ promotional. “The idea far precedes the mutual fund industry’s campaign. The Insurance Awareness Committee has been working on this since 2010. In Nov 2017, the Life Insurance Council revived the committee,” he added. Although the launch will coincide with the start of the peak sales season (Jan-March) for life insurers, it is not being rolled out with short-term sales objective in mind, Sud insisted. “It is going to be a long-term campaign and not meant to achieve any short-term sales targets. We want to explain why life insurance is important and the role it can play in people’s lives, besides explaining how to do it right. Nature abhors vacuum and the absence of communication can give rise to misconceptions,” he said.