Changing tack, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Co. Ltd (BALIC) is reorienting itself to be a “mass affluent” player with emphasis on more innovation on the ULIP side, a top official said.
The strategic shift is beginning to deliver benefits to the company in terms of increased ticket size in premiums and more business from metro and top tier cities, Tarun Chugh, Managing Director and CEO, BALIC, told BusinessLine .
This does not mean that BALIC is taking its eye off the mass market, where the company has been a dominant player, he said.
In the April-February period, BALIC recorded new business premium of ₹3,486 crore, a 31 per cent jump over the same period last year. The current product mix is about 65 per cent ULIP and the rest, traditional products.
ULIP innovation
On the anvil are more innovative products in the unit linked insurance plan (ULIP) space. The company recently launched ‘Goal Assure’ ULIP product, which has disrupted the ULIP space with innovative features such as ‘return of mortality charges’ and ‘return enhancers’. BALIC is the first company to return mortality charges to customers.
“The era of ULIPs is not over. You will get more innovation in ULIPs from us in the next few months,” Chugh said.
Chugh, who will soon complete one year at the helm of BALIC, said that the company intends to adopt ‘goals’ based selling, with customers in top cities getting more innovative ULIP products and those in the Tier 2 and 3 towns getting traditional products.
BALIC, already present in 550 cities, will go in for innovation to get to customers in these cities faster, Chugh said.
Chugh said that the company is consciously looking to grow big in the metros and hence the focus on the “mass affluent”.
“When I looked at my presence, my top five cities were not India’s top five cities. NCR doesn’t even figure in our top three. We were not selling enough in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru. So we are consolidating and trying to get big in bigger cities.”
New channel
As a dominant player in the mass market, BALIC has been the fastest growing company among the top ten in the industry. But the ticket size of premiums has been small. Only lately has it begun to look at the “mass affluent” as well.
In 2016-17, BALIC had underwritten 4.4 crore lives, accounting for 23 per cent of the Indian lives insured. Both BALIC and LIC together accounted for nearly 60 percent of the lives insured.
Now, to up-sell products to existing customers, improve service and introduce them to innovative ULIPs, BALIC has launched a new channel — ‘proprietary sales force’ — which delivered well on a pilot basis last year. Now, this new vertical will cater to 27 cities in 2018-19, he said.
“An Indian customer today wants more value from everything, including financial products”, he said.
Chatbot
Chugh said that BALIC’s chatbot ‘Boing’ is now catering to one lakh active users. Going forward, a customer can interact with Boing in more languages, such as Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. As on date, the interaction can be only in English and Hindi, he said.