Sanjay Tiwari, Chief Strategy Officer, Exide Life Insurance – Indiainfoline

In an interaction with Mamta Maity, indiainfoline.com, Mr Sanjay Tiwari, Chief Strategy Officer, Exide Life Insurance said ” In terms of customer acquisition and personalisation, Exide Life were the frontrunners in the insurance industry to adopt a mobile-first approach for our sales teams.”

The Covid pandemic has changed the narrative about financial planning and shone a light on life insurance products. The awareness as well as demand for insurance products has increased. People now better understand the benefit of life protection that comes at low or affordable premiums. The demand for better experience with the enhancement in technology and adoption of digitization is creating the need for better personalized customer journey.

We were quick to adopt a mobile-first approach. Our sales teams are empowered to ensure that the business is running seamlessly with the help of our e-sales app; at the same time, our customers can continue their insurance buying process in a hassle-free manner from the comfort of their homes.

We have witnessed, first-hand, the benefits that digitization can bring to a business, and we are convinced that it provides a strong foundation for our processes to ensure there is a smooth issuance journey both for our sales teams and for our customers.

Brief us on the recent or the upcoming products

As a progressive insurance player that is focused on customer-centricity, we keep evolving our products. We recently launched Exide Life Smart Income Plan, a non-linked, participating individual life insurance-cum-savings plan that provides regular income during the income pay-out term and guaranteed life cover throughout the policy paying term. The product offers two survival benefit options for customers at the start of the policy – Enhanced Maturity and Enhanced Income. The key highlight of the product is the ‘Income’ element which lets individuals decide their own retirement age by facilitating a regular stream of secondary income.

What according to you are the new challenges and opportunities post pandemic?

A study has pointed that the overall penetration of insurance has increased from 2.71 per cent to 4.20 per cent leading to a rise in awareness and demand towards insurance products. However, the reach of insurance products, particularly life insurance, is quite low still.

Initially, when the pandemic hit, it was important for us to ensure that communication between the policyholders and us is not disrupted in any form. Now that the worst is behind us, the focus will be about being future ready as well as introduce life insurance products that cater to the evolving needs of the new age policyholders.

What initiatives has Exide Life taken to stay relevant? Brief us on the digital initiatives that Exide Life has taken for better customer experience. 

In the last few years, we had focused largely on enhancing our digital ecosystem that helped us prepare for unprecedented changes brought in by the pandemic. In terms of customer acquisition and personalisation, Exide Life were the frontrunners in the insurance industry to adopt a mobile-first approach for our sales teams.

We have also digitised the entire process that empowers our advisors and sales personnel to continue selling virtually thereby conduct business seamlessly. We are heavily focused on learning and development of our frontline teams for which we launched online training modules for our sales teams to help them get comfortable to move from the physical to the digital medium of doing business. It is very encouraging for us that over 95% of our new proposals are now logged in through our digital platforms.