We not too long ago had an thrilling dialogue with Abhishek Gupta, Chief Advertising Officer, Edelweiss Life Insurance coverage, on customer-centric evolution in life insurance coverage on this digital age. Because the chief model champion, Abhishek manages the popularity of the corporate by selling its various and progressive vary of product choices and companies.
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Leveraging the ability of storytelling and creativity, Abhishek aspires to ship inclusive and strategic communications that may make the model stand out as a new-age life insurer. Helming a workforce of bold and artistic minds, Abhishek has been harnessing the corporate’s product improvements and superior buyer expertise to set promoting benchmarks within the business. He additionally leads the Buyer Expertise methods for the corporate and strives to construct a differentiated model expertise that may foster buyer belief and advocacy.
Abhishek has been with the Edelweiss Group for 8+ years. With expertise spanning 24 years, he has labored with manufacturers throughout a number of sectors over time – The Cellular Retailer, Walmart India (Bharti Retail), Spencer Retail, ICICI Financial institution and Shopper’s Cease.
An engineer with a post-graduation diploma in advertising and marketing, Abhishek has been acknowledged as one of many ‘25 Most Excellent Advertising Skilled of India at World Model Congress 2014’, ‘Most Influential Advertising Leaders 2017’, and ‘International Advertising Leaders 2019’ at World Advertising Congress, ‘CMO Transformation Award’ on the Pitch CMO Awards 2023 and ‘Monetary Specific Visionary Chief Recognition’ at Trendy BFSI Summit 2023.
The principle insights from the dialogue are given beneath:
Buyer-Centric Evolution:
Reimagining Life Insurance coverage in a Digital Period
1. What can be your evaluation of the present state of the life insurance coverage business? And your tackle the rising traits or shifts in client behaviour?
Life insurance coverage is a basic monetary instrument, forming the bottom of your financial savings and funding pyramid. When you defend your self, you can begin constructing and rising your wealth. Life insurance coverage ensures you’re ready for unexpected occasions, particularly if the first earner is absent.
Sadly, many Indians don’t see life insurance coverage this manner. Insurance coverage is usually seen negatively, with choices delayed and distrust prevalent. These components have turned life insurance coverage from a pull product right into a push product.
It’s uncommon for somebody to proactively search life insurance coverage. Folks usually solely think about it underneath two particular circumstances:
The most typical state of affairs for purchasing life insurance coverage is when approached by an advisor, akin to an agent, financial institution relationship supervisor, acquaintance, dealer, or monetary planner
The second state of affairs entails a set off occasion, like marriage, having kids, or witnessing a pal or member of the family’s loss. These occasions spotlight the necessity for earnings continuity
On the availability facet, the Indian life insurance coverage business is dominated by LIC, a government-owned firm. Regardless of the privatization of the business in 2000, LIC maintains a big market share. The market is very polarized, with LIC and some personal insurers controlling the vast majority of the enterprise. This competitiveness, coupled with client reluctance and the significance of distributors, makes life insurance coverage a closely pushed product.
India faces a big safety hole resulting from underinsurance reasonably than low penetration. Folks usually purchase insurance coverage with out realizing that it must be adjusted for rising earnings and altering life circumstances. As earnings will increase, insurance coverage protection needs to be upgraded to keep up ample earnings alternative. Many individuals have solely 50-60% of the protection they really want, leaving them underinsured.
Coming to client behaviour shifts in insurance coverage, it usually stays secure except a serious occasion, like COVID-19, happens. Such occasions can dramatically shift client attitudes and behaviours.
COVID-19 considerably altered client habits in 7 key methods:
1. Household turned paramount
2. Self-reliance elevated
3. Saving and investing habits improved
4. Appreciation for non-material issues grew
5. Social accountability elevated
6. A way of vulnerability emerged
7. Well being turned a precedence
Whereas these shifts have been notable throughout COVID, pre-pandemic behaviors have steadily returned. Many shoppers have returned to pre-pandemic habits.
2. How has advertising and marketing modified within the final decade? What has modified and what has remained the identical?
Relating to the evolution of promoting, conventional approaches centered on broad-based campaigns with unsure effectiveness. Digital advertising and marketing has launched measurability and instant outcomes, nevertheless it’s important to do not forget that model constructing is a long-term course of.
Efficient advertising and marketing requires a steadiness between instant outcomes and long-term model constructing. A concentrate on short-term metrics has led to a decline in memorable campaigns and an overemphasis on attribution fashions that ignore the general buyer journey.
To deal with this, entrepreneurs ought to prioritize long-term model constructing and develop complete measurement or frameworks that embrace consciousness and consideration.
When it comes to buyer expertise, vital progress has been made in shifting from product-centric to experience-centric approaches. By specializing in delivering a constant and pleasant buyer expertise throughout all touchpoints, organizations can construct sturdy manufacturers and foster buyer loyalty.
3. How essential is personalization within the life insurance coverage business? How do you do it whereas adhering to privateness rules?
Personalization is important for constructing buyer relationships, however it may be difficult in low-touch industries like insurance coverage.
Insurance coverage corporations usually create alternatives for interplay, akin to coverage anniversary dates and festivals, to personalize communications. Information enrichment is essential for efficient personalization. Whereas conventional knowledge assortment strategies present some info, corporations have to constantly replace buyer knowledge to replicate life stage adjustments.
Face-to-face interactions are invaluable for constructing belief and understanding buyer wants, particularly within the context of insurance coverage. Digital gross sales within the insurance coverage business are nonetheless comparatively restricted, with intermediaries taking part in an important position in most transactions.
Personalization is important for intermediaries as they characterize a number of insurers. Firms usually create personalised options for intermediaries, who can then supply them to prospects. Information enrichment is essential to offering personalised buyer experiences. We created a device like “You Limitless” that may assist advisors advocate merchandise based mostly on particular person wants and monetary capabilities.
By providing tailor-made options at totally different life levels, insurers can construct stronger relationships with prospects and enhance gross sales.
4. What’s your framework to grasp the large shift in direction of AI within the business? Any moral issues you have got retaining in thoughts the character of the product?
AI has broad functions within the insurance coverage business, past advertising and marketing. Specifically, AI may help with:
Buyer retention: Figuring out at-risk prospects and concentrating on retention efforts accordingly
Fraud detection: Analyzing knowledge to determine suspicious claims
Advisor administration: Figuring out top-performing advisors and investing of their improvement
Content material creation and vernacularization
Whereas picture technology remains to be underneath improvement, AI has been efficient in producing content material in a number of Indian languages.
5. What are the important thing priorities for Edelweiss and Life Insurance coverage corporations typically by way of innovation and buyer engagement?
Distribution is essential for the success of the insurance coverage business, but it usually receives inadequate consideration.
Firms ought to concentrate on bettering the distributor expertise, as distributors are key to reaching prospects. There’s a vital alternative to teach prospects about insurance coverage and supply progressive options. Nonetheless, challenger manufacturers face the problem of competing with established gamers and should spend money on training and buyer acquisition.
By Bijoy Ok.B | Affiliate Director – Advertising at Lemnisk