Insights
The Innovation Ecosystem at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance
By Mr. Manish Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance
"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things,” said Theodor Levitt. Innovation is therefore, creativity in action. For any customer-centric organisation, with elevated customer expectations, it’s important to be nimble, adaptable and in a constant state of being responsive to any change that comes our way.
In a recent report, Bain & Company pointed out that “Customers these days are more demanding. Business boundaries are more dynamic. Sustainability is now an imperative. And, digital is everywhere. To keep pace amid these seismic shifts we must be able to innovate. And scale. Again and again. Innovation is not an event or a single Big Bang project; it must be repeatable and sustainable."
This is in line with our approach to Innovation at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. In the company, customer-centricity is at the core of everything that we do and our innovation strategy is not just limited to empowering our stakeholders with state-of-the-art technology enablers. In fact, it is well woven across our business activities, products and services. We not only do things fast, we do them first, and more importantly do it in a way that we are ‘First Time Right’!.
Our key innovation milestones
Ever since we started operation, we have set innumerable industry-first benchmarks. We have been pioneers in successfully building a multi-channel, multi-product life insurance company, with a multi-dimensional service architecture. We were the first insurance company to get listed on the stock exchanges. When the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) introduced the regulatory sandbox to encourage innovation in the insurance industry, 5 of the first 7 sandbox proposals from life insurers that were cleared by the regulator were ours – a testament to our innovation prowess. During the COVID-19 crisis, it evolved further. A testimony to this is the FICCI Insurance Industry Award 2021 for ‘Innovation during COVID-19’. Similarly, during the same year our Customer Mobile App was awarded a Silver in the ‘Best Mobile App of the Year’ by Velocity Awards.
Product innovation
We offer products that meet the needs of customers’ life-stage and lifecycle changes. We were pioneers in launching the Unit Linked Insurance Plans (ULIPs), followed by Diabetes Care in the health space, and the Precious Life product for people with pre-existing health conditions. We were also the first to launch the award-winning term plan - iProtect Smart - which provided a life cover of up to 30 years.
During the pandemic, we launched the ICICI Pru Guaranteed Income For Tomorrow (GIFT) and ICICI Pru Guaranteed Pension Plan (GPP) – both designed to address obvious anxieties of the customers which include fear for one’s life, and fear of losing the livelihood. Recently, we introduced GPP Flexi which offers ‘accelerated health boosters’ and ‘booster payouts’ for additional liquidity to meet financial obligations. We also launched a new term insurance plan - ICICI Pru iProtect Return of Premium - a term plan with auto-adjusting life cover. The plan returns 105% of premiums paid at age of 60 or 70 years or on policy maturity and has the option to take cover against 64 critical illnesses.
Seamless buying journey
We continuously strive towards a convenient, fast and seamless onboarding for our customers. We offer a paperless onboarding experience (3-click cancer cover purchase journey on i-Mobile application), real-time Know Your Customer (KYC)) verification, and automated form filling using the industry-first Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Through our data analytics-based Pre Approved Sum Assured (PASA), Term by Invite and Straight Through Process (STP) customers are able to purchase insurance plans conveniently and seamlessly.
Enhanced Customer Experience
In our endeavour to make service a delightful experience for customers, we introduced anytime-anywhere, and omni-channel servicing modules for our customers. Our electronic application form journey (e-Apply) was the first such initiative in the industry.
Besides, customers can interact with us using the Visual IVR (Interactive Voice Response) link through which they can see all steps of the required service till closure on their mobile screens. With our customer mobile app, and chatbot LiGo, our customers are able to resolve their queries 24x7. LiGo is available on WhatsApp and Google Assistant for customers who prefer to interact with us using voice.
Similarly, the AI-based multi-lingual Humanoid (Voice bot) for renewal premium reminder calling has the ability to connect with 50,000 customers in an hour. The initiative won the ET BFSI Award 2021 for ‘Best Use of Emerging Technology for Business Growth’. It also won us the ‘Tech Innovator of the Year’ award from Synnex, and ‘Technology Champion of the Year’’ at the Quantic 3rd Annual BFSI Technology Excellence Awards 2022. Recently we won ‘Innovation in Customer Proposition and Experience’ award from ASSOCHAM.
Significantly, our customer mobile app has crossed 1.1 million downloads and is one of the highest rated apps in the industry on the Android Playstore and iOS AppStore. We also pioneered the tele-medical examination for customers and introduced digital life verification for annuitants which can be expedited from the comfort of their homes.
The introduction of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) based bulk policies issuance solution helped us manage scale by issuing ~65 lakh policies in just three days, which would otherwise take 130 days. We have also developed the ability to underwrite and issue insurance cover note to the customer in just 5 minutes. Our innovations are aimed at making the customer claim experience faster, smoother and more efficient. This is provided through digital claim registration process and real time tracking through chatbot/WhatsApp, and AI-based pre-claim assessment and processing.
Empowering employees
We understand that pre-sales tools are as important as sales enablers. Our collaboration platform helped sales teams interact with customers online. During COVID-19 this was the only means for sales teams to explain and sell products. We therefore empowered our sales teams with a voice-enabled lead management system and geographical tagging to reach out to customers with speed. Besides, we have 24x7 query resolution bots for advisors and sales teams, learning and development apps like Learner’s Box and My Coach, Googly Corner on My Navigator to get response to customers queries, and e-Quote app to create and share quotes with prospects.
Building a robust partnership ecosystem
Our plug and play model for partner integration ensures faster onboarding and servicing for partners and their customers. We were the first life insurer to provide easy user interface (UI) to our partners for pre-coded premium quotation and application form pages. We also fulfil the need of insurance for digital-savvy customers through Fintech, Insurtech tie-ups such as the one with PhonePe.
At ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, innovation is not restricted to a particular function or team. We have an enterprise-wide digital ideation portal called ‘Pi’ (Powerful Ideas) that has multiple access points for employees to share their ideas. Employees are rewarded for their winning ideas, and teams are formed to ensure that the ideas are executed and bear the desired outcomes. The platform also ensures that we never run out of ideas.
Our values of Customer First, Humility, Passion, Integrity, and Boundarylessness guide our actions and define the way we work. Prioritising, thinking and executing innovative ways of serving our stakeholders is the key to our existence. For us, innovation is an ongoing and a never ending process. We continue to respond to the ever-changing internal and external ecosystems proactively through creative renditions and synchronisation across all functions.
COMP/DOC/Nov/2022/711/1442
