Our aim is to empower humans with technology and not replacing them: Vijay Kumar, CEO and principal officer, Go Digit General Insurance

Vijay Kumar, CEO and principal officer, Go Digit General Insurance

The sudden outbreak of Covid and it’s ongoing effect has amplified the role of information and technology across the insurance industry, in a bid to ensure easy access to products, services and more. Amid the norms of new normal, customers are now inclined towards digital products and keen on using online channels to buy what they desired policies. To understand, how digitisation and digital maturity of customers driving the future course of the insurance segment, Rashi Aditi Ghosh of Elets News Network (ENN) interacted with Vijay Kumar, CEO and principal officer, Go Digit General Insurance.

Excerpts: 

How has been your journey of evolution so far?

Digit’s fast-paced growth in a short span of time has been very humbling. We started Digit with an aim to make insurance products simple for our customers and our growth story is a testimony that this vision of ours has resonated with Indians who are now actively seeking simpler insurance products more than ever. In a short span of four years, we have managed to serve over 2 crore customers and clock USD 400 million in annual premiums. Digit’s overall market share increased to 2% in Q2FY22 from 1.3% in Q2FY21. We also saw significant growth in motor where our market share has grown to 4.3% in Q2FY22 from 3% in Q2FY21.

Technology is reinventing every industry. How did Digit leverage the disruptive technologies to aid its partner ecosystem?

Our tech infrastructure is built in such a manner that it aids everyone in the ecosystem. We are one of the first insurers to be fully on the cloud. This especially aided our employees and partners to seamlessly transition into the work from home mode during the pandemic and ensured there is no disruption of services. We use tech at every stage to make our processes simple and faster.

Also Read: Insurance industry to remain high-touch human-oriented but with digitisation: Shyam Seshadri, Head, Innovations Lab, TATA AIG

Our aim is to use tech to empower humans and not replace them. For example, our in-house AI bot Aria helps our partners quickly generate quotes for business products in real-time. We also use AI, Machine learning and image analytics to settle claims faster and manage potential frauds efficiently. We have an app specifically for our partners where they can create their digital stores to track and grow their business. Our partners are spread across India. So, to make sure we are constantly listening to them, we started a ‘Digit Action Series’ wherein we collect feedback from them to further improve our products and processes.

Which strategies helped you stay connected with your customers even during the pandemic? 

The pandemic did not have that big an impact on our processes as our entire tech ecosystem is built on the cloud. This ensured that our customers were being served without any disruption. We also focused on self-service to empower our customers. Our turnaround time for motor claims, for example, improved as we set up an automated process to click photographs and submit claims instead of someone visiting you for inspection. We seamlessly settled close to 80,000 claims in FY22 till September 2021.

Our ‘zero touch’ service ensured that the entire customer journey is paperless and happens completely online. We managed to reduce our overall call volumes by using other channels such as WhatsApp where we have serviced over 6 lakh requests so far. We also understood the needs of our customers during the pandemic and introduced wellness benefits like Doctor on Call, Tele-medicine, Lab diagnostics & more for our GMC customers.

Also Read: How technology can help startups, businesses & SMEs choose right group health & commercial insurance

What are your growth trajectory and future expansion plans? 

We have seen a growth of 67% in H1FY22 versus 13% by the industry in the same period last year. During the first 6 months of FY22, we wrote gross written premium of ₹2,196 crore versus ₹1,312 crore in first 6 months of FY21. We are still a young company that is growing at a rapid pace. Innovation and simplification will be at the core of everything we do. As we continue to grow, we will ensure that we keep improving on our service levels. It is one of the biggest challenges and that will surely be our focus. We will continue to expand and aim to grow our market share in the coming quarters. Insurance is hugely under penetrated in India and the scope to grow is immense.

What are your plans for 2022?

As the Covid impact normalises, we expect to see good growth from next year. We will continue to focus equally on our motor and non-motor business and increase our market share in the coming year. We will continue to invest on building our tech processes to simplify and smoothen our consumer experiences. Self-service will remain our key area of focus to empower our customers and partners using various channels.

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