| CLIENT | INDUSTRY | PERIOD |
|---|---|---|
| An innovative Life Insurer in India | Insurance | Sep ’09 - Mar ’10 |
PROJECT
To build India’s first pure online sales channel
OBJECTIVES
• To provide customer-centric product offering - the best products;
• To provide straight-through processing and a beautiful customer experience;
• To build a sales channel that can be scaled as high as other traditional channels.
WORK DONE
• Project Team: A cross-functional team was setup with Product and IT leading the way. The objective of this team was to prove the concept that Life Insurance can be successfully sold online with full application processing, underwriting and client servicing be done online.
• Product development: Customer Research was done and needs of target market assessed. We targeted - Urban (Top 10 cities), Professionals, High Income. Term Life, several riders, a Unique Market-linked investment product and women’s specific health option were primary products.
• Development of the Portal: UI, UX were paid special attention to. We benchmarked the turnaround time required with that of booking a rail-ticket online. End to end it took 4 minutes for an individual to buy a life policy and have it in her inbox.
• Development of the middle-ware (Underwriting decision engine): This was developed along-with the re-insurer (RGA) and was custom built for our products. This was a first in the Industry.
• IT development: This was done on agile platform Cordys and several trials, changes were done to perfect it over next 24 months after launch.
• Back-end “assist” team: This team was created to help customers who are first time buyers of insurance online to help them carry out the transaction and offer FAQ type service.
KEY OUTCOMES
| This was an Industry first on many fronts: • India’s first pure Online channel selling life insurance • Hugely successful leading to an Industry trend of everyone adopting this. Volumes in first year crossed 30,000 policies aggregating INR150 Billion Sum Assured. • Term Insurance was sold first time in India actively. Before iTerm, Industry Term Insurance was <5% of total policies. The impact of this product/channel was game changing as Industry % of Term tripled in 3 years. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Highly profitable: The customers targeted were highly profitable with Value of New Business >40% | High % of Rider sale: 60% of policies were bought with additional riders. | ||
KEY LEARNINGS
Product and technology are important and can deliver dazzling innovations. However, robust processes, a deep understanding of customers’ needs, and segmentation are equally important. In this project every aspect of customer’s journey was designed better and executed to perfection. It was an instant success and a shining example of Innovation in the Industry. Client won Industry’s Digital Innovation Award for 5 years in a row.