IoT plays a big role in health and life insurance. Real-time feedback can sharpen product pricing and help define context-aware products. It can enhance customer engagement (wellness programs) by providing real-time data and insights, shared Rohit Kilam, Chief Technology Officer, HDFC Life Insurance, in an exclusive interaction with Srajan Agarwal of Elets News Network (ENN). Edited excerpts
Q. What are some key technology initiatives you have introduced at HDFC Life to enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency?
At HDFC Life we are launching different types of products, continuously. As part of our overall digital transformation exercise, we have embarked on the journey of building an insurance platform for the future, which includes a unified data platform, business process management and a branch in an app model. We plan to embed intelligence natively in the platform. We are also aiming to transform our approach towards customer-centricity through new platforms for claims and servicing.
Q. With your experience in IoT platforms for banking, do you see a role for IoT in transforming insurance products and services?
IoT plays a big role in health and life insurance. Real-time feedback can sharpen product pricing and help define context- aware products. It can enhance customer engagement (wellness programs) by providing real-time data and insights. Also, this IoT data can be used in risk management, claims management and the underwriting process.
Q. How is HDFC Life leveraging digital products to cater to evolving customer needs and expectations?
We have embarked on the journey to digitise customer touch points from onboarding and servicing ends. There are digital products for customer quote generation, product bundling, and product brochures along with determining lead propensity and AI recommendation engines.
For servicing the customer, we have self-service BOTs, branch automation, portals, complaint predictors, early warning systems and persistency models.
Q. Could you share insights into the role of AI and ML in enhancing risk assessment, claims management, or underwriting processes at HDFC Life?
AI and ML models have been used to underwrite insurance policies. We use it for multiple use cases like Customer authentication and liveliness check, to identify high-risk cases likely to come for early claims, to identify potential fraud cases for investigation, to predict the persistency of customers at the issuance stage, GenAI- based solution to predict customer complaint by reading emails, etc.
Q. As CTO, what is your approach to building a technology-first culture at HDFC Life?
To build a technology-first culture, it is essential to:
- Foster Innovation: This can be achieved by providing employees with the tools and resources they need to explore new technologies and develop innovative solutions.
- Invest in Emerging Technologies: Prioritise investments in emerging technologies such as AI, ML, blockchain, and IoT.
- Promote Collaboration: Foster a collaborative environment where different departments work together to achieve common goals. This is facilitated through an open office culture that we have embraced.
- Embed Intelligence: Integrating AI and ML models into various processes such as underwriting, risk assessment, claims management, and customer service.
- Provide Training and Development: We have a SkillUP program to keep teams updated with the latest technological advancements.
How do you prioritize investments in emerging technologies, such as blockchain or quantum computing, within the insurance ecosystem?
We have an approach of ‘play first and adopt later’. So we would be doing PoC, Pilots and multiple such experiments with new technologies before adopting them in mainstream business processes.
Q. Looking ahead to 2047, how do you envision the role of technology in achieving the vision of “Insurance for All” in India? What steps should industry leaders and policymakers take today to realize this goal?
Looking ahead to 2047, technology will play a pivotal role in achieving the vision of ‘Insurance for All’ in India. The role of protection policies in insurance will be all the more important due to the pace of societal disruptions, climate changes, and advancements in medical sciences leading to longer life spans and changes in the way we work. The industry needs to gear up for the challenges by adopting technology, focusing on the personalisation of services, moving to risk-based models, embedding data-driven approaches, and creating agentic processes to bring the costs of servicing down.
Continuous innovation and experimentation will be key to the survival of the industry by providing employees with the tools and resources they need to explore new technologies and develop innovative solutions. Organisations will have to invest in training and development programs to upskill and foster these changes.
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