‘Customers need more personalised products’

Customers no longer want the usual products that they have been offered for the last several years, but want personalised offerings – this was the general consensus at the BIMTECH Insurance Colloquium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology.

The first panel discussion on ‘Issues, resources and talents: expanding the IT frontier in insurance’, saw a healthy deliberation over the disruption technology has made in the insurance sector. The event, which saw a mix of senior executives as well as college students, had a large turnout with 150 in attendance.

The senior executives included Kalpana Sampat, MD and CEO, Swiss Re; Srinivas Rao, MD, Life and Health, Munich Re India Services Pvt Ltd; Tapas Nandi, CEO, JB Boda Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd; and Manoj Jain, MD, Shriram Life Insurance Co Ltd.

In the technology era, the panelists agreed that the entire focus of insurance companies has now shifted from being product-centric to customer-centric, where providing customer experience and satisfaction are at the forefront of their businesses.

“Customers no longer want the usual products which have been offered for the last several years. The shift is now towards offering them a personalised product,” said Sourabh Chatterjee, Head, Technology Direct Sales and Digital Marketing, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co ltd.

Slow implementation of technology is often attributed to the mindset that the insurance industry has had. The panel unanimously acknowledged this and pointed out that in the present era, without innovations, quick adaptability, agility and collaboration, any insurance company would find it difficult to survive and would get wiped out.

With the advent of technology, security breaches and concerns arising out of them are also of utmost importance to the sector. “We have had ethical hackers come into our team to test our assets,” said Chatterjee. BusinessLine was the media partner for the event.

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