Consumers in India favour brokers
According to a survey recently conducted by PwC, more than half of Indian consumers prefer to buy insurance products from agents or brokers.
The company’s recent study, PwC India’s Insurance Technology Adaption Survey 2019, found that 55 per cent of respondents said that they much prefer buying insurance from agents and brokers. Furthermore, the conversion rate from online modes stands at four per cent.
The firm suggests that for customers in India, insurance continues to largely be a ‘push product’, and as such, they rely on face-to-face interactions for a better understanding of the product’s features and pricing.
“The modern insurance customer prefers simple, customised and intuitive policies, an easy process and a simple and tangible cost breakup,” said Abhijit Majumdar, Partner and Technology Strategy Leader, PwC India. “Insurance providers have begun to appreciate this preference and have put the customer at the centre of product design, eliminating all poor experiences along the ‘moments of truth’ in his/ her insurance adoption journey. This shift in product design from product to human-centric design is a fundamental shift in the Indian insurance industry.”
The findings also revealed that emerging technologies such as chatbots have started picking up as the customer’s first point of contact and that 67 per cent of respondents also stated that they prefer to leverage aggregators/online platforms that enable them to make calculated and informed decisions by comparing products.
Joydeep K Roy, Partner & Leader, Insurance & Allied Businesses, PwC India, commented: “New technology gives rise to new capabilities, and processes should be redesigned accordingly to reduce wastage and delight customers. Merely adopting technology and automating processes will not eliminate inefficiencies. A change in approach is needed whereby technology is viewed as a fundamental business tool rather than an operational and process tool. The natural inhibition in a regulated industry can be dispensed with if organisations work with all stakeholders, including regulators and the government. In this context, the healthy interest regulators are showing in sandboxes bodes well for the industry.”
Read the full results of the survey here.
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