• Tweet

• Tweet

Jeete Raho (God bless), Zindagi ke sath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi (With life, after life), Sar utha k jiyo (Live life with head held high). Get the drill right? I will be talking about the Insurance sector in India and how they have failed to utilize the power of social media.

Before I get down to analyze what can be done in the Indian Social media space of Insurance, let us see what are the various types of Insurance-

1)      Life Insurance- To insure your family’s well being after your death.

2)      Health Insurance- Insuring yourself and your family against any major illness/ accidents.

3)      Retirement Insurance- To insure your lifestyle after you retire from work. (In short to live all your life poor so that you can die rich)

4)      Child’s Insurance- Making sure your child gets to study at the best college abroad. (This is quite a selfless investment because once he gets that great job he will forget you. That’s the time when the Retirement insurance comes handy. )

5)      Motor Vehicle Insurance- Insures your car against any accident by self/ others. ( Gives you that extra bit more confidence to hand over your car keys to your wife)

So, it is possible to insure almost all aspects of one’s life and doing it would seem the right thing to do. Right? But, yet it’s not the case. Less than 10% of the Indian population is only insured. What’s the reason behind it? Obviously a large part of this un-insured population cannot afford insurance.

But, there is a huge chunk of people who can actually afford it but, is too lazy or too ignorant or too un-informed about insurance. It would be a shame on the part of the LICs, the ICICIPrudentials & the Bharti AXAs not to tap this market. And Social media tools like Twitter, FaceBook and Blogs can prove to be great enablers in this task.

Let’s have a look at how the Insurance companies have been doing till now.

Bajaj Allianz has done a great job on all social media platforms. It has been tweeting its ‘jiyobefikar’ youtube stream on twitter. It is trying to create some buzz through it’s alliance with the movie Paa. For more information you can visit jiyobefikar.com

As unexpected as it might sound, LIC has been doing quite a good job on FB. It posts all the latest news related to LIC on Facebook. Though it is yet to have a Twitter handle, it has done a better job than the others.

Regarding the social media attempt of other companies it would be safe to say that they didn’t even qualify to be mentioned on this blog.

Still, for those who are interested I have put the link of my analysis of the top 10 Insurance companies.

Now, coming to How I would have leveraged the power of Social media?

1)      Create FaceBook Pages & Twitter handles: The least the insurance companies can do is own a professional FB and Twitter page. Not often would an user search for an FB/ Twitter page but, when he does, your page should feature.

2)      Engage your customers. Don’t Spam: It’s not enough to just have an inactive page. Use it to engage your customers. Talk to them. Tell them about the new schemes, new offers and tell them in a way that it looks humane. Not as if coming out from a bot. Choose your words judiciously. For eg ICICIBank_Care on twitter has quite a few followers and a lot of tweets but, almost 99% of their tweets are “Sorry. Please email us at care@icicibank.com”

3)      Educate your customer. Give them a reason to buy your product: There’s no better way to sell your product than to give your customer the reason to buy it. Host blogs where customers can get expert advice on investments. Create blogs where an user can plan his taxes using your Insurance. Provide calculators to analyze one’s income, expenditure and investments. Tell them stuffs like how much would be the inflation adjusted value of Rs 1 lakh be 20 years from now.

4)      Build a Brand: It’s been years that the Insurance sector was opened to Private and foreign player still, 70% percent of the premiums each year are paid to Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). Why? The don’t have any flashy ads, no gimmicks. They have the trust and Brand value. I am sure your parents must have asked you to buy an LIC policy atleast once. It’s because of this trust that private and foreign players are finding it a tough job to compete with LIC.

There is another huge reason why Insurance companies should embrace social media. The application of the new Policy by IRDA from October 1^st, 2009 whereby it has put a cap on the charges levied by the Insurers. No longer can the companies fool the ignorant customers by promising 30%+ returns and deducting the equivalent amount in the name of brokerage and administration charges.

It would become a liability for the companies to employ broker/ agents and share with them a part of their profits. This is where social media and the web can come extremely handy and revolutionize the way the Insurance sector in India operates.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Presence of Indian Banks – ICICI Bank
2. Social Media – the Big Bang.!!
3. Social Media Presence of Indian Banks – HSBC Bank
4. Social Media – The Dell Way
5. Social Media – The Power Unleashed