ICICI’s insurance arms to focus on tech

For driving growth in the current financial year, the two insurance arms of the ICICI Group will rely on investments, latest technology, its value-added customer-centric services, better claims management, and measures to expand the non-traditional distribution channels.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance (ICICIPRULI) registered growth in the embedded value to ~188 billion in 2017-18 against ~161.84 billion in the previous year. Value of new business nearly doubled in the last fiscal from ~6.7 billion to ~12.86 billion at the end of March 2018.

According to the company’s annual report, increased household savings and a strong economic growth projected at 7.4 per cent in 2019-20 are drivers for life insurers.

In coming year, the company plans to focus on retail segment and build a ‘plug-andplay’ system for its partners.

In the age of mobile apps, brick and mortar is expensive and inconvenient. Keeping this in mind, the company will expand its non-traditional channels of distribution .

This means growing its online presence through campaigns as well as strategic tieups with new innovative webaggretors or fintechs. At present, it is involved in a industry-wide blockchain project, which is focused on solutions for on-boarding and claims management.

In terms of products, the focus will be to continue making policies easier to understand with full transparency for customers. At the end of 2017-18, ICICIPRULI got the time to process a claim down to 2.99 days.

Protection being the lions’ share of the life insurers’ business, in the following year it will be offered as an add-on to savings products across channels. The company plans to have a customised regimental strategy as it expands the retail business.

Even in the case ICICI Lombard investments in technology has helped improve cost efficiencies and their abilities to serve customers better.

In 2017-18 the company’s Gross Domestic Premium Income rose to ~123.57 billion around 15.2 per cent over FY17, and the profit after tax grew 22.8 per cent to ~8.62 billion.

The Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon is a game changer for the insurance industry worldwide, and ICICIGI, over the past year, has introduced some tools to improve its operations.

For example it introduced drone technology for servicing fire and engineering insurance policies, improving its claims management over these high risk and costly policies.

Building on bancassurance and the online channel, the general insurer will also develop new partnerships over the year to deliver heath covers to Tier-II and-III cities, “as the loss ratio in these cities has been considerably lower as compared to the rest of the portfolio,” states ICICIGI’s annual report for FY18.

In 2017-18, the company began ambulances services in 26 cities in the country, given its foreign partner, Prudential Corporation of Asia’s experience in the area. Similarly, in FY18 through tie-ups with start-ups and other service providers for the health or crop segments.

These strategic relations and value-addition services to existing customers and policies will be the main focus for ICICI Lombard over the next year, as more and more young people drive the company to become more innovative and adaptable to their requirements.

ICICI Prudential registered a growth in the embedded value to ~188 billion in FY18 as against ~161.84 billion last year. Value of new business doubled in the last fiscal year from ~6.7 billion to ~12.86 billion at the end of March 2018