Vijay Kumar, CEO & Principal Officer, Digit Insurance
Today’s customers are comfortable with the online purchase model because of a macro environment of trust that is getting formed around online transactions and companies. Digit is focused on assisting its offline partners to imbibe digitalisation says Vijay Kumar, CEO & Principal Officer, Digit Insurance, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
What are your views on India’s insurance industry? Is the sector innovating enough in comparison with its counterparts?
In the last year, there has been a visible impact on the insurance industry policies, especially for motor and health. There is a gap in terms of innovation for products like travel, health, etc. as most of the time, even if the product is purchased, people don’t see the value in it as they are hardly able to make a fair claim under it.
There is also a challenge of under penetration of insurance in India. General Insurance penetration in India is 0.94 percent. The main contributing factors for this is low awareness and lack of trust in insurance. But during such times, the industry has to work around by reaching out to new customers, inspiring them to use insurance as a tool for protection. With the new-age insurance companies performing well while focusing on providing simplified and transparent insurance, traditional companies are also following suit to provide their customers with simple and bite-sized products.
However, this transformation is still at its cusp and has a long way to go to innovate the industry from within. The industry has to start moving away from its monolithic paper-based lengthy documentation process and adopt new-age technology to simplify the way insurance works. Insurance inspections and claims procedures can be drastically brought down to minutes. Insurance companies will have to work towards a common goal of increasing awareness and adopting insurance. Looking at the way the financial sector is changing, the insurance industry can no longer work in the way it used to and must adopt new methods to regain the lost trust of customers.
What was your idea behind creating Digit Insurance? Why is it different?
Digit Insurance has been founded by Kamesh Goyal, an insurance veteran with over 30 years of experience in this industry, with a mission to ‘Make Insurance Simple’. When Digit’s initial team got together, the one thing that bothered us was how much insurance was mistrusted by people. Our idea was to simplify the insurance customer’s journey and provide customers with a seamless experience. Right from products to processes and documents, we are trying to simplify their insurance journey.
Today, with the way we challenge the traditional insurance processes from onboarding to claims of the customer, we crossed 5 Million customers and closed 0.1 lakh claims in less than 2 years. We have achieved close to $300 million premium till now with a 1.2 percent market share in the general insurance industry in India. Moreover, technology and simplification of processes is a win-win situation for both the consumer and the insurer, ensuring a sustainable business for us. We have used technology to make the claims process simple for our customers, with our DIY smartphone-enabled inspection app. We have also ensured that we take the complications out of our insurance documents, making a two-page summary document that is tested by 15-year olds!
You are an online-focused insurance solutions provider but have a physical presence in a few states. Why do you think an online presence is superior today?
Today’s customers are comfortable with the online purchase model because of a macro environment of trust that is getting formed around online transactions and companies. Also, for them, online is becoming the preferred channel of research before buying. We are focused on assisting our offline partners to imbibe digitalisation. We are also providing our offline partners with tools and portals with which they can make all the processes, buying to claiming, digital for their customers. Although we have seen that a trustworthy adviser like an agent, especially for non-motor policy buying decisions is still one of the channels where people go to make their insurance purchases. We hope and believe that with new-age insurance companies, it would change too.
You are an online-focused insurance solutions provider but have a physical presence in a few states. Why do you think an online presence is superior today?
Today’s customers are comfortable with the online purchase model because of a macro environment of trust that is getting formed around online transactions and companies. Also, for them, online is becoming the preferred channel of research before buying. We are focused on assisting our offline partners to imbibe digitalisation. We are also providing our offline partners with tools and portals with which they can make all the processes, buying to claiming, digital for their customers. Although we have seen that a trustworthy adviser like an agent, especially for non-motor policy buying decisions is still one of the channels where people go to make their insurance purchases. We hope and believe that with new-age insurance companies, it would change too.
