Insights

The private life insurance industry celebrated a crucial milestone of 20 years of liberalisation in 2020. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance was one of the first life insurance companies off the block and we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Company’s operations in December 2020 and our 21st anniversary this December. Our journey of building an enduring institution began with issuing a set of insurance policies to seven underprivileged children. That small step 21 years ago continues to remind us of the purpose of our existence – serving the protection and long-term saving needs of our customers with sensitivity.

In this journey of growth and innovation, we have achieved many milestones that we are particularly proud of, with several of them being the first in the life insurance industry. We were the first Company to offer a multi-product, multi-channel distribution network with a multi-service architecture model. We were also among a handful to offer products in the health and pensions category.

As a customer-focused company, even our product development strategy revolves around addressing the latent or stated needs of customers. This led to some first-of-its-kind products such as Diabetes Care, Future Perfect, Precious Life, Lakshya and others. More recently, 5 of the 7 proposals filed by life insurers which were approved by the Regulator under the Regulatory Sandbox Initiative belonged to our Company.

Over these 21 years, we created an impact with size, scale, and substance in equal measure. In FY2015, we created history by becoming the first private life insurance company in India to cross the ₹ 1 lakh crore mark in Assets under Management (AUM) from a modest beginning of ₹ 100 crore in FY2001. In FY2021, we crossed the ₹ 2 lakh crore mark in AUM, signifying the trust reposed in the Company by our customers. As of March 31, 2021, our Annualised Premium Equivalent (APE) was ₹ 64.62 billion.

The numbers speak for themselves. We serve more than 4.3 million Indians through retail insurance policies and 51.6 million Indians through retail and group insurance policies. We provide insurance coverage of ₹ 21.7 trillion and our in-house team manages assets of ₹ 2.37 trillion. We have a multi-channel distribution network of more than 198,000 agents, about 700 distribution partners and a strong employee base of around 14,000. More importantly, we have a pan India presence through roughly 470 company offices, aided by 12,000 partner bank branches covering more than 95% of the country’s GDP.

As an industry leader, we have also been a trailblazer in terms of transforming the business with greater adoption of technology, agile processes, product innovation and a well-balanced distribution, channel, and product mix, which helped both in business growth as well as delivering superior customer service. With our customers in mind, we have simplified the onboarding process through a 3-click purchase journey by rolling out Pre-Approved Sum Assured (PASA) offers which do not require customers to undergo medical tests.

Intrinsically, we are also wired to be always prepared for change as well as to deal with challenges. So, when the pandemic hit us we quickly enabled a transition from physical to digital sales, a paradigm shift in the way life insurance is sold, as safety and security became a top priority. Now over 95% of new business comes in digitally. We also empowered our employees and distributors to conclude sales virtually from the safety and comfort of their homes through online collaboration platforms.

It does not quite end there. We were also the first insurance company to list on the Indian stock exchanges, opening up a new sector for investors. We have, since then, taken our shareholders along in this journey of growth, and are proud to be one of the leading companies in terms of market capitalisation.

Industry too has taken note of our growth and the trust that the brand inspires. We have won multiple industry awards along the way including the prestigious ‘BrandZ Top 75 Most Valuable Indian Brands’ in 2019 and 2020 and the ‘BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands’ in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 as adjudged by WPP and Kantar. In both 2020 and 2021, we won the FICCI Insurance Industry Award for ‘Claims & Customer Service Excellence, and for ‘Innovation during Covid-19’ in 2021. Recently, we also won the ET BFSI Excellence Award 2021 for ‘Excellence in Innovation’ for ‘Best use of Emerging Technology for business growth’.

People represent our power

Established as a joint venture between ICICI Bank Ltd and Prudential Corporation Holdings Ltd, we put in place the foundations of a people strategy right at the beginning. From the very start, we hired for skills and the right values and sourced talent from diverse backgrounds and industries.

From just seven branches in 2000, we have grown to over 470 company offices across India today. Today, our senior management team is tenured, with 85% having spent more than 10 years in the Company. In addition, the Company’s leadership development and succession planning processes have ensured that 88% of positions at leadership levels are filled internally, providing opportunities to our employees to grow with the Company. We are also proud to be a leadership factory with a large number of our alumni working in C-suite positions across industries and geographies today.

What really differentiates us is our people promise delivered through our Cornerstones of Fairness and Meritocracy, Learning and Growth, and providing a Supportive Environment. Besides, our culture rooted in the core values of Customer First, Humility, Passion, Integrity and Boundarylessness helps us create a unique identity for the Company with all employees aligned to a common purpose. To enable the delivery of our employee promise, we have curated policies, processes, and systems that are aligned to the Cornerstones of our employee value proposition.

We realise the importance of balance. We, therefore, have a multi-generational workforce that blends the richness of experience with the energy of youth. Accordingly, the varying needs and priorities of each employee cohort are catered to with differentiated propositions. We promote an inclusive culture and have instituted a Diversity and Inclusion policy with an emphasis on encouraging women at the workplace, and enabling a culture that enables employees to bring their authentic selves to work. We are committed to ensuring all employees have a safe, secure, and supportive work environment.

Our workforce comprises people with varied and diverse backgrounds, educational qualifications and skill sets. We take pride in the fact that we are an equal opportunity employer with zero tolerance for any discrimination based on gender, religion, caste, or class. As of March 31, 2021, we had 26% women out of our total workforce of around 14,000 employees and 40% women in the functions of customer service and operations and support roles. Similarly, about 40% of our campus hires are women candidates.

Our focus on our people is evidenced by the fact that in the latest employee survey, over 90% of employees gave a top 2 box score on multiple parameters including recommending the Company as an organisation to work for, alignment to the Company’s vision, values and strategy, employee safety & well-being and engagement & learning initiatives during Covid-19.

Customer-centricity continues to drive us

Care, Concern and Commitment are the three Cs that define our approach towards our customers. It is therefore not surprising that ICICI Prudential Life Insurance was the first life insurance company to get doctors from the underwriting team to engage and provide clarifications on medical findings to customers with adverse health reports, enabling them to understand the reasons for charging the extra premium. This is just one of many such initiatives that went on to become an industry standard. We were also the first to introduce tele-medicals in India 11 years ago, and have been at the forefront to deliver the best-in-class customer service experience.

In October 2019, when the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) made it mandatory for customers paying annual life insurance premiums of ₹ 10,000 and above to have electronic-Insurance Accounts (e-IA), we embarked on the process of creating e-IAs for our customers. We have assisted in the opening of more than 6 lakh e-IAs as of FY2021.

We realise the importance of the use of technology to improve customer experience. We were therefore the first life insurance company to offer WhatsApp as a customer service channel and issue over 65 lakh policies over just a 3-day period. Now Voice, Video and Vernacular represent our personalisation journey. To provide additional convenience to customers, we have made our chatbot LiGo accessible on the Google Assistant platform enabling customers to access information on their policies by saying simple voice commands. The video-based medical underwriting eliminates the visit to a diagnostics centre. Similarly, the multi-lingual AI-powered Humanoid has achieved significant success in renewal premium reminder calling and can reach out to over 50,000 customers in an hour.

We are living in a fast-paced world and our services should also represent that same speed and alacrity. We are therefore committed to resolving customer grievances with speed. By pitching need-based products, we have one of the lowest grievance ratios in the industry. As of FY2021, it stands at 46 as against 361 in FY2011 per 10,000 new retail policies sold.

For a life insurance company, claims are really the moment of truth; this is also the time when an organisation’s ability and promise get tested. Since 2001, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has relentlessly pursued the objective of providing a hassle-free claim settlement experience through the philosophy of ‘First Time Right’. We settled 98% of our claims during the year FY2021. Similarly, our average claim settlement time for non-investigated claims was less than 1.4 days for FY2021. In our constant endeavour to improve the claims experience for our customers, we launched the ‘Claim for Sure’ service initiative in March 2020. This helps us reduce the financial distress caused to loved ones by settling all eligible claims in one day after receipt of all documents.

Setting new benchmarks through innovation

Twenty years ago, when the insurance industry opened up for private players, it required the salesperson to meet a customer multiple times to understand his/her needs, share a proposition and conclude the sale. Similarly, the issuance process too would take several days.

When we started our digitalisation journey, it was a combination of manual and automated processes. Over time, with the use of technology, our processes evolved from being physical and paper-based to being digital and contactless. From multiple hand-offs, iterations, and disparate systems and processes earlier, today a policy can be issued within minutes.

As technology advanced, we embarked on a digital transformation journey in 2011 and over three years, we digitalised a majority of our new business, issuance, and service processes. We also invested heavily in the integration framework for a plug-and-play model to empower partners and leverage technology advancements and dynamic ecosystems.

We were also one of the first to introduce paperless onboarding. NSDL and UIDAI granted us permission to facilitate the validation of customer information on a real-time basis through e-KYC validation, again one of the first in the industry. More importantly, this has significantly reduced the policy issuance time.

Digitalisation aided in real-time KYC authentication, providing multiple online premium payment options. We have also been early adopters of new-age digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Analytics and have fully empowered our customers, distributors, and employees in conducting such transactions in a seamless and effective way.

When Covid-19 hit, it was our early investments in technology that enabled us to seamlessly shift to the Work-From-Home mode without any disruptions to processes. Though onboarding and servicing were fully digitalised, sales engagement was still ‘phygital’ in the pre-Covid era. To overcome the ‘phygital’ challenges arising out of the need to adhere to social distancing norms, we rolled out a pre-approved solutions and collaboration platform. The endorsement of our digitalisation initiatives came in the form of the Celent Award in 2015.

Technology has helped us simplify and provide a seamless and immersive experience to customers and distributors. It has also simplified and improved the claim settlement process, bringing it down to a day for all eligible claims. With technology and innovation, we will continue to make our customer experience simple, intuitive, and satisfying.

Resilient and agile investment philosophy

Whether it was through the global financial crisis of 2008 or the most recent NBFC crisis in India, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has maintained a track record of zero non-performing assets across market cycles over the last 21 years. That’s centred on our investment process that relies on using high-quality and extensive research based on data and reasoning, which is backed by risk control measures to provide superior risk-adjusted returns to our policyholders.

Our clear and disciplined investment framework is led by a highly skilled and knowledgeable investment team. It is also amongst the largest and the most experienced in the Indian life insurance industry with an average experience of over 18 years. It is therefore not surprising that ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is now one of the largest domestic fund managers in the country.

Our commitment to society and stakeholders

We are fortunate to be in the business of life insurance, a unique financial planning tool that provides families with a financial safety-net and enables them to achieve their long-term financial goals. Our endeavour is to ensure that every Indian family has adequate financial protection while, also taking into account our wider responsibilities to the society and the environment.
In line with our vision, we proactively support meaningful socio-economic development in the country and enable a larger number of people to participate in and benefit from India’s economic progress.

To bring that to fruition, we have adopted multiple Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives over the years. It is specifically designed to provide resources to enhance economic and social development by supporting programmes around the focus areas of healthcare, education, skill development, and sustainable livelihood for the under-privileged. We also encourage employee volunteering and extend support for disaster relief and rehabilitation.

As any responsible corporate citizen, we are also conscious of our responsibility to support the environment and society through a robust ESG framework. We are a significant institutional investor in the capital markets and like to ensure that the businesses that we invest in operate in a responsible manner. Towards this, we have enhanced our investing framework to formally include multiple ESG considerations.

Through our various ESG-focused initiatives, we saved a carbon footprint of about 2,700 tonnes in FY2021. Besides, about 95% of new business applications were logged digitally which ensured savings on travel time and paper usage, thus effectively reducing the carbon footprint.

As part of our commitment to financial inclusion, it is our endeavour to make life insurance easily accessible to all. Our objective is to create value for our customers, employees, shareholders, and all other stakeholders. From our shareholders’ perspective, our aspiration is to double the FY2019 Value of New Business (VNB) by FY2023 through our 4P strategy of Premium growth, Protection business growth, Persistency improvement, and Productivity enhancement, while ensuring customer-centricity continues to remain the bedrock of everything we do.

The journey ahead

Life Insurance in this decade will be characterised by innovation, capitalising on digital trends, deeper integration with external ecosystems, and next-generation business practices in sales, customer service, and operations. In the coming years, digital will be a key catalyst for growth and will be at the core of the industry’s transformation as we use technology to unlock growth, improve business economics, and deliver superior customer and distributor experience.

We are at a stage where life insurance has moved from a push to a nudge product. The future of life insurance in India would revolve around innovative products and solutions to create ‘pull’ and unlock growth.

COMP/DOC/Dec/2021/2912/7152