'50% customers have been acquired online'

Second generation private life insurance company Aegon Life Insurance (formerly Aegon Religare Life Insurance) believes that customers in India are opening up to buy insurance products via the ecommerce channel.

“We brought in the concept of selling life insurance for the core need of protection. In a country like ours, insurance used to be sold more as a saving oriented product for a long time. Taking a different stand in the market was challenging, but we are happy that we took that path,” Aegon Life Insurance Chief Distribution Officer Amit Kumar Roy informed Deccan Herald in an email response.

Roy added, “We had started the concept of selling pure protection online in India and we are happy to note that many others followed us.”

Roy explained, “Today, ecommerce is a happening sector across all commodities. We are happy to have done our bit. No doubt it’s a value proposition for the discerning customer, it is good to see that number growing. We are also happy to see the market for protection growing every year, that is a good sign of market maturity. In most of the developed countries, the protection market in life insurance is as high as 40-50%. We have a big opportunity lying there.”

“We are happy to share that about half of our customers have been acquired online. They are those discerning people who reposed their faith on us and decided to buy the right product at the right cost. We shall be happy to have more and more customers purchasing from us and they must feel happy too. We shall continue our endeavour towards this and would try a growth of 20-25% in selected markets.”

The firm, which embarked its journey in 2008, has 83 branches across 43 cities. The company has 6,397 life insurance agents serving 4,39,014 customers across India.
As on March 31, 2016, the company has issued nearly 16,988 (inception to date — 4,97,273) policies with a sum assured of over Rs 1,600 crore (inception to date — Rs 83, 877 crore).

During the same period last year, the company has issued nearly 16,081 (inception to date - 4,40,434) policies with a sum assured of over Rs 1,948 crore (inception to date — Rs 73,758 crore).