Philam Life: Transforming lives, digitally
True to its thrust of making customers central to the business, Philam Life, the country’s premier life insurance company, began its transformation journey in 2013, developing digital innovations to serve its customers better.
The process of buying insurance has always been perceived as difficult and tedious. While the product itself is desirable and necessary, most potential customers are turned off by the hard sell approach of persistent insurance agents, the mound of paperwork involved, and the countless meet ups necessary to avail of an insurance policy. Much has changed in the last couple of years, including the evolution of the entire experience to simplify the process for the customer.
With customer centricity at the core of its design, Philam Life’s website serves as the entry point to learn about the company’s different product offerings. Easy to navigate, intuitive, and comprehensive, this platform makes learning about insurance uncomplicated by using simple language to present intimidating insurance concepts and terms. Understanding the different products and features becomes painless, as they are highlighted via product categories, through relatable key moments in the customer’s life. A self-help financial calculator is also readily available, empowering customers to quickly assess their needs, and effectively capturing the interest by leading them to submit their contact details.
Customers who signify interest in a policy and meet up with Financial Advisors are introduced to Philam Life’s ipos, acronym for the interactive point of sale system that helps them facilitate the selling process. This state-of-the-art ipad-based digital platform is the only fully functional digital end to end selling tool in the local life insurance industry. It makes the buying process seamless and convenient for both the customer and Financial Advisor by collecting the necessary information needed to generate a policy proposal instantly, and close the sale immediately.
ipos puts the customers’ need at the center of the buying process by ensuring that the product being sold is based on careful assessment of their financial goals and priorities, as well as their risk profile. Getting an insurance policy then becomes a more meaningful conversation on financial goals where the customer comes out with clarity of purpose, as opposed to a crash course of insurance terms and processes. Once a proposal has been generated, and the customer has signified confirmation to purchase, he can just sign off directly on the ipad, pay via credit card or arrange through auto-debit, and he will receive the e-receipt and e-contract immediately via email.
The relationship between Financial Advisor and customer continues even after the purchase of the policy, with iserve, Philam Life’s digital customer service platform that enables its 8,000 Financial Advisors to perform various functions that would normally necessitate going to the Customer Service Centers (CSC). iserve enables Financial Advisors to be self-sufficient in servicing the needs of customers, cutting down waiting time and reducing the need to go to the CSCS by allowing them to perform various transactions such as receive payments (including through credit card), submission of requests, changes in details, and process claims, among others.
For the more self-sufficient and independent customers who want to access their details and perform transactions by themselves (such as view policy details, view billing notices and other relevant notices, view the value of their investments, manage portfolio, request for assistance and update their contact information), another online portal, eplan, is made available 24/7 anytime, anywhere.
“We have designed our digital roadmap with the customer journey in mind. By putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes, we were able to understand their pain points and we developed our digital tools to address their concerns,” said Gigi Pio de Roda, Philam Life’s Chief Operations Officer. “These innovations have resulted in benefits across all the stakeholders, providing faster, better and more consistent service for our customers, unlocking more time for our financial advisers to focus on meeting customers, and improved productivity of our Operations team. Transaction volume in our branches and Call Centre are slowly going down since we’ve seen growth in usage among Financial Advisors, and service satisfaction levels have also improved as measured by independently conducted surveys. There is positive momentum in transforming how we service our customers and enable our financial officers, and whilst we are happy with the progress thus far, this is only the beginning.”
Another digital breakthrough that allows Philam Life to continuously engage its customers is Philam Vitality, its science-backed wellness program that incentivizes members with rewards for knowing and improving their health. Through the Philam Vitality app, the company is able to continue engaging the customer even after the policy is served and before it matures or a claim is made.
Kelvin Ang, Philam Life Chief Executive Officer commented, “The positive feedback we’ve been receiving from customers and Financial Advisors are very encouraging. By enabling our Financial Advisors with digital tools that allow them to provide personalized service, we are able to hit two birds with one stone: ensure regular engagement with customers and serve them better.”
Know more about Philam Life by visiting their website at philamlife.com, Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/aiaphilamlife, email at philamlife@aia.com or call (02)8528-2000.