Let's hear Anand Pejawar, President-Operations, IT & International Business, SBI Life Insurance speaking more about the area where technology make a big difference in the insurance sector.
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00:00 The MC was more worried with people coming back after lunch.
00:11 I think all those who are having the session after lunch are more worried because this
00:15 is a graveyard session.
00:17 And more so when it is in a five-star hotel with good food, so you tend to doze much faster
00:23 than what you would otherwise tend to do.
00:26 So coming back to the topic that I have been asked to talk for the next 10 to 15 minutes
00:32 is area where technology made a big difference in the insurance sector.
00:38 And when I'm doing that, I will restrict my presentation to the life part of it, so all
00:44 my non-life friends, please excuse me, but I'm sure some of the technological innovations
00:51 or developments which have happened are equally true for the non-life part also.
00:58 I just chose this few topics because when you talk about life insurance, these are typically
01:02 the questions which come to the mind.
01:07 Do I need life insurance?
01:09 My astrologer says I'm going to live till 75 years, so should I take insurance to that
01:16 extent?
01:17 Why should I pay premiums?
01:18 Too much of hassles.
01:19 People ask for too much of paperwork.
01:24 Medicals are tedious.
01:25 You ask me to go for a medical at a particular place which probably I'm not required and
01:29 all that sort of stuff.
01:30 But if you look at the study which I recently bumped into, it's a US-based study, it's almost
01:35 65% of the population it seems there believe that they are adequately, into inverted commas,
01:43 insured, but in fact they are just about 24%.
01:49 Probably you people would have read in the press one of a very celebrated actress who
01:57 came back from US after a cancer treatment and I was listening to one interview of hers
02:03 recently which took place and one particular sentence what she said was very, very interesting
02:11 to me as an insurance person.
02:14 I'd just like to play that 20 seconds slot for all of us to understand.
02:21 I'm just saying that there's a kind of discourse around cancer.
02:26 What was your discovery when you entered this world?
02:29 Is there something that really needs to shift in the way people look at cancer and react
02:34 to cancer?
02:35 Is there a kind of silence around it that one needs to break through?
02:39 What was your experience?
02:40 Well, a couple of things into it.
02:41 First of all, I think insurance is very important.
02:44 It's been very expensive, this treatment.
02:45 So yeah, definitely that was something you always think it's not going to happen to you.
02:50 So you know, I was not prepared, but that's a lesson learned.
02:54 Insurance is important.
02:58 Insurance is important.
03:00 And if this person with this kind of a background says that, then we go with the presumption
03:05 that insurance is important for everybody, irrespective of their bank balances and irrespective
03:10 of the kind of assets that they hold with them.
03:13 Now, how do we make life simpler?
03:16 Because if we have to make insurance, just like in the earlier sessions, we had affordable
03:20 housing.
03:21 Now, can we make insurance and life insurance affordable?
03:24 And if yes, what are the ways of looking at it?
03:27 One of the ways of looking at it, how do you simplify the products?
03:30 Very limited scope for doing that, because innovation nowadays is not very much seen
03:37 in the products part of it.
03:38 But still, whatever is possible, I think each of the companies are doing it.
03:42 So I won't get into too much of details on the products part of it.
03:45 I think one of the things that companies are doing in this particular field is pertaining
03:51 to the processes part, because this is where the technology can really play a huge, huge
03:55 role.
03:56 Now, whatever I'll be talking in the subsequent slides is not only pertaining to SBI Life,
04:01 though SBI Life has definitely done a lot of work on this.
04:05 But I'm talking on the industry part, because every company has done excellent work as far
04:11 as the integration of technology and the innovation in technology that has happened.
04:17 So if you look at the new digital revolution, how it has happened with a lot of these fintech
04:20 companies and insurtech companies, as you all know, insurance is basically done through
04:25 distributors.
04:26 So distributors could be individual agents, it could be bankers, it could be brokers,
04:29 a whole lot of distribution channels that have opened up post 2002.
04:34 And one of the things that usually people grumble about is, you know, you have a huge
04:39 amount of paperwork that needs to be done.
04:42 12 pages of proposal forms, AYC, KYC, ALM, a whole lot of papers.
04:47 So that itself puts off people, you know, they keep on extending or postponing the buying
04:51 of it.
04:52 So what have companies done as far as integration of technology is concerned is that most of
04:58 the companies have gone in for a digital onboarding process.
05:01 So nowadays you don't find people going with briefcases full of proposal forms.
05:05 They have an iPad or they have a tab or they have a mobile on which the onboarding process
05:11 completely happens.
05:13 Subsequent is the documents.
05:14 KYC, AML, financial documents, all that whole stuff which needs to be done.
05:19 But thankfully in today's scenario you have agencies and you have reputed government agencies,
05:25 reputed agencies who give you all the data that is required of your customer, you know,
05:31 in a very authentic manner.
05:32 And this happens almost online.
05:34 So maybe your Aadhaar card is currently not available, but at one point of time Aadhaar
05:40 was available, so a whole set of KYC was taken care of.
05:44 But if you take a PAN card, you look at driving licence, you look at voter's card, you look
05:50 at, you know, the stuff that you have with the credit bureaus, you have a link up with
05:57 them, you have a permission of your customer to access their credit ratings that they have
06:02 or score that they have, and your proposal can be taken care of as far as the financial
06:06 underwriting is concerned.
06:08 Delivery of policy document, again a huge problem.
06:11 Policy is not being received, policy is received in a tone fashion, policy is received where
06:15 it is, you know, soaked in water and all that.
06:18 So now we have e-repository, so just like a dematting of your shares, you demat your
06:22 insurance accounts with the repositories and that takes care of your stuff.
06:28 So lifetime servicing, life insurance policy starts from one year, five years, ten years,
06:32 fifteen years, twenty years to whole life.
06:35 So how do I maintain that, how do I do the servicing part of it?
06:38 So it's very easy now, most of the companies, in fact all of them have come out with self-service
06:42 portals including which is done through your mobile, because mobile is something which
06:47 people carry, you know, you might not have your wife with you, but you definitely have
06:51 a mobile with you.
06:52 So anything that is available on the mobile which you want to make people accept, you
06:56 put it on the mobile and this is something which definitely works.
06:59 And the last but not the least is how do you make the entire process of claim settlement
07:04 happen in a most seamless fashion and that's where companies have moved to almost a paperless,
07:12 penless issuance of policy.
07:14 Now when I say that, some of you might sitting here will say, does this guy actually know
07:18 what he's talking or he's just talking because he's been asked to come here and make a presentation.
07:24 Ladies and gentlemen, I want to show you one example and when I'm showing you this example,
07:29 it has nothing to do with SBI life, though we have developed it, but I'm not here to
07:33 market this product nor am I here to tell you, but this is something where we felt about
07:39 a year back that the integration on the IT side and the innovation if it can be done
07:44 and if products can, insurance product can be made very, very simple, then there is a
07:50 large chance of just like we are looking at making affordable houses for poor people,
07:57 you can make insurance products reach every person in this country.
08:05 I'm not sure how many of you are the account holders for SBI, but SBI has its own platform,
08:11 this is not our platform, this is the bank's platform called Yono, Yono stands for you
08:15 need only one, that's the full form of Yono, which is actually an online platform which
08:21 takes care of a whole lot of activities right from banking to insurance, general insurance,
08:27 life insurance, mutual funds, cards, shopping, film, movies, booking, everything is done
08:33 on this particular platform.
08:35 So if you are a SBI customer and has not downloaded Yono, I think this is something which you
08:40 are missing out on, which you are doing, but this is the first platform where we integrated
08:45 the insurance products of SBI Life on this platform and this is not redirection.
08:50 Normally what we see is that there is an integration which happens with some other website or some
08:54 other platform where you go and click and then that click redirects you to the website
08:59 of the parent company or the company that you are probably trying to buy the product.
09:05 This is a platform where the buy of the product or the sale of the product happens on the
09:10 platform of Yono itself.
09:13 And I'll show you how it happens.
09:15 These are the facilities that are available as far as insurance is concerned on this particular
09:19 platform.
09:20 So whether you want to have your entire details on the platform, you want to link your policies,
09:25 you want to go and do switches, redirection, change of nomination, change of address, whatever
09:31 customer service you want, it's available to you on this particular platform.
09:36 When you are a customer of the bank and you have bought SBI Life policies also along with
09:40 it, you can also go and generate your premium payment certificates, including receipts and
09:45 all that from this particular thing.
09:48 And how does it happen?
09:49 Is it too difficult?
09:51 We have already put in six products.
09:52 I will not go through them because that's not the purpose of showing or not the purpose
09:56 to sell my products, but you have also individual products available on this platform.
10:00 So not only the group products, but also the individual products available on this platform.
10:05 And this is purely done through API integration and data analytics.
10:09 So again, this is a technological thing that has been brought into the picture.
10:14 I'll just show you some screenshots of what this Yono happens and how within three clicks,
10:19 precisely three clicks, you can buy an insurance policy on this particular platform.
10:26 These are the three clicks that you actually go in.
10:29 We have a backend analytics which moves on the bank's database, not our database.
10:36 And it tells you up to what level of insurance you can buy.
10:41 It ranges from anywhere between 2 lakhs to 20 lakhs.
10:45 And it tells you exactly how much insurance you can buy.
10:48 Three questions on the medical part of it.
10:51 And then you go and click for the payment that you need to do.
10:55 You get an OTP for the payment.
10:56 You put the OTP.
10:58 Your COI is generated.
11:00 It's instant insurance that is available to you through this platform.
11:05 Probably one of the first ones where you have a real-time issuance of COI also to you the
11:11 moment you click the submit button and get the payment done.
11:17 That's the reason we say it is done on three clicks.
11:19 What have we done further on the integration of the technologies?
11:24 Tying up with corporates where your employees can actually get these insurance, not this
11:29 but the different kinds of insurance that we look at completely on a digitalized platform.
11:35 So no intervention, no paper, no pen, everything happens, including certain medical reports
11:42 which are available in an organization which are directly flown to our company through
11:46 API integration.
11:47 So you don't have to go under the hassles of getting your medicals done and all that.
11:51 So that is the kind of things which has already been developed and definitely there is a huge
11:56 scope to improve this integration the way we look at it.
12:01 And what's the last bit of piece when we look ahead?
12:04 What is it that we can look ahead when we look at the insurance and technology and innovation
12:08 part?
12:10 Most of the companies today have this calling which happens on before you buy a policy,
12:16 after you bought the policy but before it is underwritten.
12:19 It's called pre-insurance welcome calls.
12:21 Companies have moved ahead from those pre-insurance welcome calls from call centers to actually
12:26 digitized audio-vidual applications which are available on mobile which can be sent
12:33 to you on a bit.ly link and you actually do the verification yourself.
12:38 And the beauty is when this data comes back to the company, the company exactly knows
12:43 the latitude, longitude, the date and the time where you were.
12:47 So it helps in authenticating the person when it's pertaining to life insurance.
12:51 So very important development that has happened and there are a few more developments which
12:56 are being done on this particular front.
12:58 Look at telemedicals.
12:59 Earlier even if you had to have a full medical which is you go and stand in front of a doctor
13:04 and he'll ask you ten questions, you answer, he'll take your weight, he'll take your thing
13:08 and then you go back.
13:09 Even for that you had to spend time.
13:11 Now that is done on phone.
13:14 One step further, even this telemedical is now being done on an audio-visual part of
13:19 it.
13:20 So that again is an improvement on the technological part as far as the insurance or buying of
13:24 life insurance is concerned.
13:27 Robotic business application, I think RPA, everybody talks of it but there are a few
13:30 companies who have already started working on robotics which is giving a huge benefit
13:36 to the insurance work because there are a whole lot of systems, processes which are
13:40 big in nature, which are repetitive in nature, which helps down to cut and give you a much
13:45 better customer service at the end of the day.
13:48 There are companies including us who have gone and integrated with Amazon Alexa.
13:53 Nowadays you find ads for Amazon Alexa.
13:55 You can typically go and talk to Amazon Alexa which is integrated with the chat bot and
14:02 ask so many questions which will help you to take care of your policy or whatever requirements
14:07 you have.
14:08 So making life simpler and putting this right to the generation Z, what we call it today,
14:15 who are more into these kind of Alexas and Google Talks and things.
14:20 And last but not the least, the WhatsApp.
14:22 I think most of us are hooked up to WhatsApp and today WhatsApp is one of the major medium
14:28 of communicating with the customer in a very big way.
14:32 So whatever time was allotted to me, I think I have just broadly told you about the technical
14:40 and the technology integration and innovation that has happened in the last one or two years
14:47 as far as the life insurance business is concerned.
14:51 Thank you very much.
14:52 Thank you so much Mr. Vijayawada.
14:55 So I am going to request you to please stay with me on stage as I invite Ms. Vidya to
15:00 please join me to present a token of our gratitude to you.
15:04 Thank you so much for that very, very comprehensive presentation.
15:08 So I am going to request you to please take center stage.
15:16 Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it once again for Mr. Anand Vijayawada, President, Operation
15:21 IT and International Business, SBI Life Insurance.
15:24 Thank you.
15:25 Thank you.
15:25 Thank you.
15:26 Thank you.
15:26 (upbeat music)
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