Bajaj Allianz Life, one of the leading private life insurance companies in India, has a pan India spread with 600+ branches, more than 70,000 insurance consultants and over 10,000 employees. The brand’s strong distribution network also includes tie-ups with several payments banks, small finance banks, NBFCs, and web aggregators.
Kayzad Hiramanek, Chief - Customer Service & Operations, Bajaj Allianz Life, speaks to us about what’s different with Bajaj Allianz Life.
Q: What is Bajaj Allianz Life offering different from its competitors?
A: Typically, the main proposition of the life insurance company is the death benefit. Bajaj Allianz Life has changed this proposition to offering living benefits of life insurance i.e. offering life insurance benefits to the customers when they are alive. We think the demographic dividend of a country where 60 % of population is below 35, are not looking at death benefits. They area rather looking at investment and wealth creation solutions that help them achieve their aspirations. Today, the life expectancy in India is 69 and this will only rise due to better healthcare facilities and awareness of a healthy lifestyle. The other important factor is that the per capita income has crossed $ 2000, and with higher disposable income in hand, people start thinking about investments to grow their wealth.
Bajaj Allianz Life offers investments solutions that allow individuals to achieve their life goals, through systematic investment in a life insurance product. In fact, we have a whole plethora of products which will cover and individual’s life goals at different stages of life and addresses the gamut of protection , wealth accumulation and retirement needs. We recently launched a retirement product for those who want to pursue early retirement as the product allows them to get a systematic tax-free withdrawal up to the age of 100.
Q: How have you leveraged technology to bring your services and products to the market? Are applications helping in channel business as well?
A: Technology has been the backbone behind various innovation in the industry, and at Bajaj Allianz Life we are continuously driving this innovation across the value chain. Forty percent of India already is smart phone savvy, so we are riding that wave. We have ensured that our customer acquisition and their entire life cycle management is on the internet or on an app, to provide them a single window of their policy. Eighty percent of all our insurance consultants (ICs) are logging in their proposals for purchase on a mobile tablet called INS-tab. It gives the distribution partner (Insurance Consultants) the ability to login and issue the policy within minutes. It is integrated with the CKYC data base and documents can be uploaded and read by OCR. Integration with a medical practitioner for telephonic examination or video MER of the customer is also possible. Further, customers can make payments on the spot by card or net banking, with an auto-mandate so that the policy stays persistent throughout the life cycle.
Yes, we are working towards making our agency channel digitally empowered to enable our Insurance Consultants (IC)to service customers in real time, and enhance engagement with them. Towards this, we have a comprehensive portal called i-SMART for the ICs. My agent can download the iOS or android app of i-SMART and can use it for prospecting, sourcing, collecting payments and even send soft copy of the policy, to his customers or see their entire portfolio, at the click of a button. It is also important to note that most of the customers typically like to talk to the seller, the IC, rather than going to the manufacturer -that is us.
Q: Do you have tools for helping the in-house team manage these apps for agents?
A: Yes, we introduced a digital tool called i-MANAGE for the internal sales teams to manage the entire value chain of Insurance Consultants digitally. This mobile app enables the sales manager to get a view of the entire portfolio and operations of ICs – ranging from their sales pattern to the AUM they have accumulated, and viewing the portfolio of customers and their interactions with us. He becomes the portfolio manager for the mini distribution architecture.
- The insurance consultant recruitment process is also all online now on a mobile app called i-RECRUIT. This is the first-of-its kind mobile app in the industry that allows the sales manager to recruit a person digitally from anywhere and at anytime. Here the entire hiring process of ICs right from application to submission of form, training and scheduling of exams to finally licensing, is all done online, and completely paperless. This digital tool has enabled us to reduce the time taken for hiring by half i.e. We now recruit agents digitally in just 14 days, from an average of 30 days in the manual login processes earlier. With this tool, we are able to hire better quality of agents, bring them on board faster, and further reach many more customers to get their life goals done, with us.
A: Customer across channels can service themselves online with us. For them, we connect with a chatbot called BOING (Bajaj Online Insurance Guru). It was launched in Sept 2017 and today approximately around 3.75 lakh customers are using it actively. Customer engage with BOING largely through conversational chat for their regular service needs such as getting their fund statements, or paying renewal premiums, etc. BOING is available in 5 languages – Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, which largely cover the market.
In addition we have a portal called LifeAssist that helps the customer to do everything that he would have been able to achieve in a branch. It is a secure place that allows all functions like updating contact details, manage portfolio, get statements, switch funds, get the policy document or top up policies. In addition we now offer an online ‘certificate of existence’ to our customers who are annuitants which is an industry first initiative and will enable our customers to submit the certificate of existence online, from the convenience of their home / office.
A third element of branch digitization is an app called Mosambee. We are again the first in the industry to roll out this digital initiative enabling us to take our branches to our customers’ doorsteps. Mosambee is an app for our executives can service the customer in the comfort of their homes/ offices by providing a branch on the move experience and takes care of everything that could be done in a brick and mortar branch.
Q: What kind of a gaps did you see in the market due to which these apps came about?
A: The aim is to provide ease to the customer, especially when everything can be done immediately, and with full transparency. Having online connect is easier for customers to assess the right amount of investment or coverage they need, and process it online, without the need of a distributor. They can also click to call and fix an appointment for a distributor to come home and service. There are two strategies we use here. The first is to see insurance more as an investment tool than an end of life settlement. And secondly, providing the ease with which these investments can be made.
Q: What changes are you seeing in the market?
A: We notice that the digital uptake in Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations is very high because the distance between the branches and the customers is high. It maybe that the road conditions might not be great, or time to travel to the branch may be longer, or even the distributors themselves may not be available. So we are using technology to offer ease of purchase through SMS and bit.ly links for our service. Multilingual communication is a huge advantage to drive customer empowerment in these markets
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