“We hope to maintain a similar growth rate in the current year also. In the first two months (April to May 2021), we have seen over 60 per cent growth…,” Shanai Ghosh, Executive Director and CEO, Edelweiss General Insurance, told.
“Our focus areas remain motor and health and we believe that there are so many ways that we can simplify customers’ experiences and journeys. So our focus will remain motor and health, with 80-85 per cent of the business to come from these two segments,” she explained.
The rest of the business will come from niche product categories, she added.
Edelweiss General Insurance (EGI) is a three-year old insurtech start-up belonging to the financial services Edelweiss group.
Since the company didn’t have to make a transition in terms of going from physical to online because of the pandemic, the digital model really helped EGI, she said.
“It was not just about the growth of our premium last year, but our customers also grew from about 40,000 a couple of years ago to 1.6 million last year,” she added.
Talking about the company’s one of the most innovative products launched last year, where customers can switch on and off their motor policies in accordance with their usage, Ghosh said the company will make this product further engaging and personalised in terms of user experience.
“In the switch on and off product, we realised that many customers forgot to switch on their insurance when they were driving, and that could create a problem. So we are trying to create a feature which will automatically detect motion and prompt the customers to switch on the insurance,” she added.
In the health segment, the company is looking to create more products and sought approval from Irdai for a digital OPD product under the regulatory sandbox mechanism, she added.
In health, the OPD (out patient department) patients expense is something that is not covered extensively in health insurance policies. A large part of the problem is the network of hospitals, in case of OPDs, these networks are not readily available.
“What has happened with Covid is that the concept of telemedicine — online consulting has become far more acceptable and prevalent. So we are taking advantage of this change in consumer behaviour to launch a digital OPD product in partnership with a health tech firm. Under this, we will offer customers online consultation, diagnostics at a certain discount, nutrition consulting, pharmacy at a certain discount, among others,” Ghosh said.
Besides, the company is also looking to launch an on-demand product catering to specific needs such as accidental injury, sports injury, burglary, etc.
These products can be bought for a certain duration of time, say sports injury cover while running in a marathon, she said.
As the retail focussed motor and health insurance will account for majority of the company’s premium collection, “the remaining business is slated to come from niche products like embedded products”, she said.
For example, the company has embedded a flight cancellation product with a couple of digital partners.
The company will continue to look for opportunities in niche areas like these, Ghosh said further.
