Today almost every sector is embracing technology for better productivity and exponential growth. Those sectors who used to rely on the offline interfaces are now swiftly moving-up to implement digital tools. Digital transformation is playing a very crucial role for many important sectors in India. Banking was the first which used the digital transformation wave few years back to provide ease of banking to it's customers. Now in the fast evolving world, Insurance sector is also taking up full advantage of digital solutions to ramp up their growth. Probus Insurance is one of the InsurTech player in Indian market who are offering wide range of services to it's customers. In order to know more about the impact of technology in the insurance sector, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor &Publisher, Digital Terminal had an quite informative discussion with Rakesh Goyal, Director of Probus Insurance. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How do you see the growth of InsurTech players in the Indian market post Covid-19 era?
Rakesh: Although a lot of innovations are required, insurers are stepping towards providing customised insurance products. For instance, insurers are coming up with motor products, having premiums based on the 'pay as you drive' concept, which however, requires telematic devices and innovative solutions to implement. To see such innovative solutions, it requires a complete transformation. However, due to Covid-19, there's already a change in the medical check-ups, some insurers have adopted telemedical check-ups, sending kits to the customers' homes for self medical tests, and also, video-based medical tests. As customers are now more serious about having a health and life cover, the market will see a rise in such products. But, even for that, premium will play an important role. For which, it is expected that insurers will soon come up with unique and innovative health and life products. In all this, digital transformation will play the crucial role. Those processes and operations which are still carried offline will see the transition towards online. Cloud-based services will be the backbone of the digital transformation. Furthermore, IoT and AI/ML will be the main technologies to bring such transformation.
Rajeev: What is the biggest differentiator between Probus Insurance and other InsurTech players in the Indian market?
Rakesh: Bootstrapping the business right from a minimal viable online product to offering 1200+ Insurance plans which include Car, Two-wheeler, Health, Life, and Travel, from 29 insurance companies in LIVE API integration, Probus Insurance has come a long way. It doesn't end there, Probus also offers online tech solutions for buying insurance for Goods Carrying and Passenger Carrying vehicles. Moreover, Probus is the only tech solution provider to offer online insurance solutions to compare and buy Home and Business Insurance instantly through POS.
Probus offers customer support through its AI-based WhatsApp chatbot and Live Agent chat services. We have implemented Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to send timely renewal notices through Whatsapp and Email. We help customers who earlier had ended up buying the wrong product or who may need expert's advice on active policies to meet their ever-changing demands. To help such customers, Probus Insurance has implemented customized systems for auditing and analyzing existing Insurance portfolios of the clients. The amalgamation of tech-driven and customer-centric products and services is what makes Probus stand out.
Rajeev: What are the basic principles of business for your company?
Rakesh: We focus on making our product simple and seamless. Today, with recent changes in our product, it stands out, making it a customer-centric product completely. The backbone of our achievement is our operational excellence and superior customer service, which is backed by technology and risk management advisories. We are always striving to provide better customer experience, which has led us to be one of the top insurance solutions providers in India in a short span of time. Our main pillars on which our brand stands out today is our team of experts, speedy online support facility, handheld claim support, and customer-centric product development. We ensure that our customers get active support even after post-sales. We help customers who earlier had ended up buying the wrong product or who may need expert's advice on active policies to meet their ever-changing demands. To help such customers, Probus Insurance has implemented customized systems for auditing and analyzing existing Insurance portfolios of the clients. And, we will continue to leverage technology to its fullest to make sure our brand always stands out in the market.
Rajeev: What are your future investment plans to spread your reach across India?
Rakesh: The buying process will see a change from field sales to e-sales, and it will be the new normal. In India, buying insurance was mostly about a face-to-face meeting with an agent. Customers want handholding when it comes to buying insurance, especially, buying complex and critical insurance products such as health and life. This process will undergo a lot of changes. Tele-sales will be a new normal, including video calling to explain the product. Or customers will buy online independently. So, looking at these scenarios, we are focusing on making a simple, seamless and customer-centric product delivery with superior customer support experience. Probus has geared its digital team to reach more customers organically through SEO and social media. Moreover, to uplift the morale of field-sales—Point of Sales person (POS), Probus has opened its technology to Point of Sales (PoS) across the country. Using the website or app provided by Probus, POS can continue issuing insurance policies without any hassle. Probus is working to provide simple tech solutions to field-sales people and using our technology solutions will help them in transition.
Rajeev: What have been the key achievements of Probus so far in this market?
Rakesh: The growth trajectory has been memorable since the foundation of Probus Insurance Broker Pvt Ltd, in the year 2002. Insurance space has seen a lot of transitions in the last two decades, from more private players entering into the insurance space to digitization of insurance. And, along with these phases of transition, over the years, Probus has grown from issuing policies offline to a completely online portal, with more than 29 insurance companies tie-ups in Live API integration to help customers in making an informed decision. We were successful in providing more than 2 lakh policies online alone in Sept 2019, which is just another feather in our cap. Providing our tech solutions to POS for insurance products like commercial vehicles, property insurance, fire policy to compare and help customers in buying such products online instantly. Digitization of insurance has helped us to grow tremendously in the last five years, which led our company to be honoured with the award of "Digital Broker of the Year" by the ABP News and ET Now BFSI awards 2018-19. Though we have come a long way during the last two decades, we are on a journey of making insurance a pull product, and so there's still a long way to go.
Rajeev: How do you keep working to provide better service support to your customers? How technology plays a crucial role in scaling up your service infrastructure?
Rakesh: We have adopted cloud-based services so that operations run smoothly. It has also helped us in scaling up the infrastructure. For customers, our team is continuously in touch with customers to understand their needs and guide them with whatever they need help with. We have AI-based WhatsApp Chatbot along with Live Agent customer service to support customers. Whether it be policy details, renewals or reaching out to the claims department, one can reach out to us right from WhatsApp. In case any customer needs a life or health policy, we are helping with telemedical and other processes as required by the insurers to issue a policy. We have set up a Robotic Process Automation (RPA), to send automated, timely renewal notices to customers through WhatsApp and Email. Our team is assisting customers at every step of their buying process and filing claims.
