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Aegon Life Insurance, which sells its insurance policies directly to people through its own sales team and digital channels, seeks to provide a stronger focus on its savings plans in order to gain the ‘specialist’ status that it claims to have achieved in life protection plans.
Though it already offers some savings plans, including unit-linked insurance plans (ULIPs), it plans to build on it with a new set of products. It is getting ready to soon file a new savings product with the regulator. It plans simpler savings products in the immediate term and more complex ones later.
The company hopes that savings plans will gain traction on the digital platform as more and more people are becoming comfortable with a digital platform.
“Protection is one thing we have been known for and hence, we have taken that as a flagship with a bouquet of products. It is also the easiest product to go digital and will remain our mainstay. But, our next target is to put more savings products on the digital platform,” Vineet Arora, Managing Director & CEO, Aegon Life Insurance Company, told BusinessLine .
The company has done research on various savings plans in the last six months. “We have actually done more than 2,000 sample size research to figure out what really triggers the decision to buy a savings plan, and the findings have given us the idea to devise at least two-three products,” he said.
In premium value, protection schemes account for 30-35 per cent, while savings make up 60-65 per cent. But, in terms of number of policies, 60 per cent is protection plans. The industry average is in single-digit percentage point.
Two years ago, the company undertook a restructuring exercise under which it decided to go to customers directly and stopped selling policies through agencies. It also planned to position itself as a specialist in protection plans.
“Our business is growing well now. We are happy that this fiscal has gone well for us, reflecting the success of the new strategy which has strong digital push. We hope to end this fiscal with a premium of ₹140-150 crore, which will be a significant increase when compared with ₹91 crore in 2016-17,” said Arora.
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