We recently had an exciting discussion with Abhishek Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Edelweiss Life Insurance, on customer-centric evolution in life insurance in this digital age. As the chief brand champion, Abhishek manages the reputation of the company by promoting its diverse and innovative range of product offerings and services.
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Leveraging the power of storytelling and creativity, Abhishek aspires to deliver inclusive and strategic communications that can make the brand stand out as a new-age life insurer. Helming a team of ambitious and creative minds, Abhishek has been harnessing the company’s product innovations and superior customer experience to set advertising benchmarks in the industry. He also leads the Customer Experience strategies for the company and strives to build a differentiated brand experience that can foster customer trust and advocacy.
Abhishek has been with the Edelweiss Group for 8+ years. With experience spanning 24 years, he has worked with brands across several sectors over the years – The Mobile Store, Walmart India (Bharti Retail), Spencer Retail, ICICI Bank and Shopper’s Stop.
An engineer with a post-graduation degree in marketing, Abhishek has been recognized as one of the ‘25 Most Outstanding Marketing Professional of India at World Brand Congress 2014’, ‘Most Influential Marketing Leaders 2017’, and ‘Global Marketing Leaders 2019’ at World Marketing Congress, ‘CMO Transformation Award’ at the Pitch CMO Awards 2023 and ‘Financial Express Visionary Leader Recognition’ at Modern BFSI Summit 2023.
The main insights from the discussion are given below:
Customer-Centric Evolution:
Reimagining Life Insurance in a Digital Era
1. What would be your assessment of the current state of the life insurance industry? And your take on the emerging trends or shifts in consumer behaviour?
Life insurance is a fundamental financial instrument, forming the base of your savings and investment pyramid. Once you protect yourself, you can start building and growing your wealth. Life insurance ensures you’re prepared for unforeseen events, especially if the primary earner is absent.
Unfortunately, many Indians don’t see life insurance this way. Insurance is often viewed negatively, with decisions delayed and mistrust prevalent. These factors have turned life insurance from a pull product into a push product.
It’s unusual for someone to proactively seek life insurance. People typically only consider it under two specific circumstances:
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The most common scenario for buying life insurance is when approached by an advisor, such as an agent, bank relationship manager, acquaintance, broker, or financial planner
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The second scenario involves a trigger event, like marriage, having children, or witnessing a friend or family member’s loss. These events highlight the need for income continuity
On the supply side, the Indian life insurance industry is dominated by LIC, a government-owned company. Despite the privatization of the industry in 2000, LIC maintains a significant market share. The market is highly polarized, with LIC and a few private insurers controlling the majority of the business. This competitiveness, coupled with consumer reluctance and the importance of distributors, makes life insurance a heavily pushed product.
India faces a significant protection gap due to underinsurance rather than low penetration. People often buy insurance without realizing that it needs to be adjusted for rising income and changing life circumstances. As income increases, insurance coverage should be upgraded to maintain adequate income replacement. Many people have only 50-60% of the coverage they actually need, leaving them underinsured.
Coming to consumer behaviour shifts in insurance, it typically remains stable unless a major event, like COVID-19, occurs. Such events can dramatically shift consumer attitudes and behaviours.
COVID-19 significantly altered consumer behavior in 7 key ways:
1. Family became paramount
2. Self-reliance increased
3. Saving and investing habits improved
4. Appreciation for non-material things grew
5. Social responsibility increased
6. A sense of vulnerability emerged
7. Health became a priority
While these shifts were notable during COVID, pre-pandemic behaviors have gradually returned. Many consumers have returned to pre-pandemic habits.
2. How has marketing changed in the last decade? What has changed and what has remained the same?
Regarding the evolution of marketing, traditional approaches focused on broad-based campaigns with uncertain effectiveness. Digital marketing has introduced measurability and immediate results, but it’s essential to remember that brand building is a long-term process.
Effective marketing requires a balance between immediate results and long-term brand building. A focus on short-term metrics has led to a decline in memorable campaigns and an overemphasis on attribution models that ignore the overall customer journey.
To address this, marketers should prioritize long-term brand building and develop comprehensive measurement or frameworks that include awareness and consideration.
In terms of customer experience, significant progress has been made in moving from product-centric to experience-centric approaches. By focusing on delivering a consistent and delightful customer experience across all touchpoints, organizations can build strong brands and foster customer loyalty.
3. How critical is personalization in the life insurance industry? How do you do it while adhering to privacy regulations?
Personalization is essential for building customer relationships, but it can be challenging in low-touch industries like insurance.
Insurance companies often create opportunities for interaction, such as policy anniversary dates and festivals, to personalize communications. Data enrichment is crucial for effective personalization. While traditional data collection methods provide some information, companies need to continuously update customer data to reflect life stage changes.
Face-to-face interactions are invaluable for building trust and understanding customer needs, especially in the context of insurance. Digital sales in the insurance industry are still relatively limited, with intermediaries playing a crucial role in most transactions.
Personalization is essential for intermediaries as they represent multiple insurers. Companies often create personalized solutions for intermediaries, who can then offer them to customers. Data enrichment is key to providing personalized customer experiences. We created a tool like “You Unlimited” that can help advisors recommend products based on individual needs and financial capabilities.
By offering tailored solutions at different life stages, insurers can build stronger relationships with customers and increase sales.
4. What is your framework to understand the big shift towards AI in the industry? Any ethical considerations you have keeping in mind the nature of the product?
AI has broad applications in the insurance industry, beyond marketing. In particular, AI can help with:
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Customer retention: Identifying at-risk customers and targeting retention efforts accordingly
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Fraud detection: Analyzing data to identify suspicious claims
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Advisor management: Identifying top-performing advisors and investing in their development
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Content creation and vernacularization
While image generation is still under development, AI has been effective in generating content in multiple Indian languages.
5. What are the key priorities for Edelweiss and Life Insurance companies in general in terms of innovation and customer engagement?
Distribution is crucial for the success of the insurance industry, yet it often receives insufficient attention.
Companies should focus on improving the distributor experience, as distributors are key to reaching customers. There is a significant opportunity to educate customers about insurance and offer innovative solutions. However, challenger brands face the challenge of competing with established players and must invest in education and customer acquisition.
By Bijoy K.B | Associate Director – Marketing at Lemnisk