Embracing digital innovation, the Aviva Life way

Evolving consumer behaviour in the insurance sector is threatening traditional growth levers such as TV advertising, necessitating a shift to personalised mobile and online channels. With a combination of rich customer data, telematics, and enhanced computing power, Aviva Life Insurance has embraced digital innovation to increase customer engagement.

As an industry not exactly known for digital innovation, insurance players are now playing catch-up to meet the demands of increasingly tech-savvy customers. With policy holders increasingly demanding digital-first distribution models, Aviva is re-strategising many of its models.

Anjali Malhotra, Chief Customer, Marketing and Digital Officer, Aviva Life Insurance, says India’s demography is changing, along with the behavioural pattern of customers. “It is known that Indians are underinsured, but with millennials making up for almost 34 per cent of the population, they are attentive towards the need for insurance,” she told BusinessLine .

New features

As technologically-savvy millennials tend to spend a majority of their time in front of a screen, Aviva has evolved to keep up with the changing dynamics.

“We recently launched Alisha (Aviva Life Insurance Self Help Assistant), an AI-enabled chatbot, to provide round-the-clock assistance to users. Developed by Findability Sciences on the IBM Watson platform, the NLP (natural language processing) chatbot helps consumers with instant quotes and information about an insurance plan,” said Malhotra.

Aviva also has an SMS Bot, and by posing a couple of questions, consumers can get information about a particular product.

That’s not all. Developing user-friendly mobile apps, investing in digital channels, hiring developers, and analysing customer data for key trends are some of the innovative strategies adopted by the company.

Aviva has developed an online platform, Aviva Kid-O-Scope, a dedicated channel for parents to nurture their child’s inherent talent, which offers curated blogs on parenting tips.

“Earlier, though men in the family used to take key financial decisions, be it making investments, purchasing assets or getting insurance products, the trend appears to be changing,” points out Malhotra.

Last year, Aviva Life Insurance conducted a pan-India financial literacy survey, which revealed that women were catching up with men in financial planning.

The survey also noted that compared to men, women showed better acceptance to digital modes post demonetisation, are more focussed on their children’s education, and tend to show more faith in insurance.

What has also gone under the radar for most people are medical costs, which have been shooting up appreciably. As life expectancy of an individual increases, the risk of critical illness in later years also rises.

Data shows that only 18 per cent of the people in urban India and 14.1 per cent in rural areas have health insurance plans. Malhotra says the current mindset among people is to ascertain how much they receive as returns while investing in an insurance policy, with most purchasing the cheapest plan with highest returns.

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