CRM implementation in the insurance sector aims to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Successful CRM requires integrating people, processes, and technology to obtain a unified customer view. Major Indian insurers like LIC, HDFC Ergo, and Tata AIA Life have implemented CRM systems to streamline operations, improve customer service, and increase sales. However, failures can occur if data is inconsistent, customer needs are not considered, or systems are not properly integrated. Overall, CRM provides benefits but also poses challenges for the insurance industry in India.
2. CRM
• Customer satisfaction in any sector is a multi-faceted dimension
which encompasses quality product and value addition through value
evidence
• CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a company-wide
business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability
by solidifying customer loyalty
• There are three key elements to a successful CRM initiative: people,
process, and technology.
• CRM is perceived as an
• Information technology solution for ensuring a better customer services
by increasing business in competitive environment
• Meeting the demands of the market
• The needs of customers
• Evolved as Customer- Centric Philosophy for whole organization
3. Objectives of CRM
• CRM is an organizational strategy to develop mutually
profitable lifelong relationship with the customer
• The primary objectives of CRM are to build and maintain a
base of committed customers who are profitable for the
organization
• Use technology and human resources to understand the
needs and behavior of present and potential customers.
• Acquire, retain and establish mutually rewarding, one to
one, relationships with customers.
4. Objectives of CRM
• Provide better customer service to customers.
• Identify high value customers so that the organization can
serve them better with differential service.
• Increase customer revenues by cross selling and up
selling.
• Simplify marketing and sales processes
• Collect customer information at all possible points and
making this information available to the entire
organization
5. Need of CRM in Insurance Industry
• Insurance products are becoming more commoditized.
• Presence of numerous players.
• Advertising efforts are being countered by comparison portals,
insurance advisors and corporate alignments.
• A large share of business is driven through intermediaries where
information challenges exist for effective management.
• Companies continue to face stiff revenue targets spread across too
many stakeholders.
• Stakeholders struggle to deal with too many processes, systems and
geographies
• Speedy documentation and processes at the time of issue of policies
• Prompt redressal of customer grievances
6. PROCESS OF CRM
• Redesign Functional Activities
• Redesign the functional activities on implementing CRM while
working at cross-purposes functional Departments
• Customer-centric Business Strategy
• Plan around customer wants but not company goals,
• focus on listening to customers but not forcing them to listen to
you
• Promote communication of marketing including database
marketing (e-database marketing, e-database, e-marketing, etc)
7. CRM Process
• CRM Initiative
• Introduce new technologies in System
• Communicate & Educate employees
• Identifying Customers
• Primary Customers : policyholders, beneficiaries, insured, agents
or brokers
• clear understanding of each of the customer segments
• build an infrastructure and strategy to provide customers with
products and services
• Collecting and owning customer data
• Capture and combine customer information from various offices &
sources
8. Existing CRM Facilities in
Indian Insurance Sector
• MAX NEW YORK LIFE
• The RATER strategy for its operations and for the
customers
• Reliability
• Assurance
• Tangibles
• Empathy
• Responsiveness
9. • CUSTOMER LISTENING SYSTEMS
• The company has a customer listening system
• The tools used for it are:
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Agent satisfaction surveys
• Service scorecard (Customer touch point experience)
• Customer/Agent issues inventory
• Service monitoring questionnaire with policy pack
• Complaint questionnaires
10. VALUE CHAIN
• Product development
• Customer acquisition
• Policy issuance
• Post policy servicing
• Collections/renewals
• Claim settlement
• This process is supported by Customer Care/call centres,
IT, F& A, Actuarial, HR &facilities, Marketing and legal
processes.
11. LIFE INSURANCE CORPORATION
• e- CRM software by the help of Wipro and IBM .
• CRM project is the largest of its kind in India.
• Wipro and IBM work together to compile the data policy holders of
LIC.
• Data would reflect consumer behaviour of policy holders, nos of
customers going for loans
• Extensive network with a Web front-end to make policy detail and
services more accessible.
• EPS (Enterprise Portal System)
• Voice-
• enable it’s WAN and video
• Conferencing solutions
12. Benefits for LIC
• Streamlines processes
• Collections via the Web reduce time taken for
transactions & benefited LIC by 12% reduction in costs.
• Single point of servicing of the customer.
• Single Window Operations for all products and services
for a customer
• Customer ID links all policies of a customer from the
branch data base.
13. HDFC ERGO GENERAL INSURANCE
• With the new system in place, field executives can now
upload leads generated from the market, third-party
databases, and existing customers into a central
repository.
• The sales team then uses the Lead Tracking and
Reporting Mechanism tool to manage leads and track
these leads across the customer lifecycle, generate various
reports for top management
14. Benefits for HDFC ERGO
• The system has given the flexibility to customize the
products according the user's needs.
• A single repository of data enables the company to
closely track the sales pipeline and figure out where the
gaps are, and how to close them out.
• An increased lead conversion rate which stands at 30%. A
30% conversion rate of 20,000 leads equals 6,000
policies.
15. Strategies for Success of CRM
• Comprehensive Repository
• A repository of customer information incorporating data of the entire
organization and all its locations should be created
• A system should be built to allow real time data access
• Localize
• CRM systems’ mid-point contact software must be in local language for
customers and employees
• Should adhere to local security and privacy laws, management of currency
related issues
• productive integration of local business processes
• Phased implementation
• Single point testing
• MNCs must begin with identifying their most successful and revenue
generating country
• Reduces risk of failure of overall system
16. Strategies for Success of CRM
• Collaborating with all stakeholders
• Organizations should involve existing business partners
• business and channel partners offer valuable inputs from their
expertise area
• help acquire buy-in for new technologies and processes.
• Integration
• Effective cross-channel integration helps all departments to be
actively involved in sales and service through a single
customer view
• Integration between front office and back office systems is a
must.
• User coaching
17. Successful CRM Implementation
in Insurance Sector
• Reliance General Insurance
• Leading provider of Health, Car, Home, Travel and Business
insurance.
• Network of over 200 offices spread across 173 cities in 22 states of
India.
• Founded in 2000.
• Challenges Faced:
• Different processes for different customer segments.
• Reorganize and streamline reporting systems.
• Eliminate multiple reporting tools and constant data reconciliation.
• Implement "one version of the truth" solution across information
silos.
18. Solution
• Effective lead management through direct channel &
telesales
• Effective customer servicing by intelligent allocation of cases
to specialist teams & closures within SLA.
• Integration between various core systems for effective
customer servicing/operations management.
• Lead capture through various source & distribution across
agencies for a quicker inspection & sale of policy.
• Sales Force Automation, Marketing Automation, Customer
Service & Support along with Analytics module
• Starting with 500 users in 2008, Reliance General Insurance
has now a CRMnext user base of 10000
19. Benefits
• Enhanced the capabilities of customer servicing by
increasing first time right (FTR) and turnaround
time (TAT) adherence by 400%.
• Reduced the cost of servicing by a great margin.
• Improved lead conversion.
• Increased the capability of customer retention.
• Reduced time and IT resource requirements for regulatory
reporting.
20. TATA AIA Life Insurance
• Background
• Tata AIA Life Insurance Company Limited (Tata AIA Life) is a joint
venture company, formed by Tata Sons and AIA Group Limited
(AIA).
• It struggled with multiple systems, technologies and stakeholder
conflicts. Customer information and processes were fragmented in
over 25 systems.
• Challenges
• Inter-department coordination
• No unified system of customer information available
• Manual assignment for premium collections over spreadsheets and emails
created delays
• Manual assignment of new applications for verification, validations
21. • Challenges
• Knowledge retention
• No effective tracking of channel, branch and vendor persistency and
performance.
• Lack of reliable measures to track feedback of customers on products and
service.
• Standard Customer Communication
• No standardized platform for communication between internal team and
customers.
• Process control and inefficiency
• No single system to monitor new application issuance across all touch-
points.
• No cataloguing of undelivered or invalid cheques
• Manual extraction and analysis of customer data for execution of
campaign.
• Incorrect capturing of service requests due to lack of validations leading
to increase in wait time for customer
22. Solution
• Convenient New Business Process
• Single system for Branch, operations, agents
• Reduced departmental dependencies
• Pending Management
• Policy Dispatch Management
• Integrated Customer Services Process
• Across Touch-points - call center, branch, email, web, mail,
• Across Request Types - Enquiry, Complaints, Requests,
• Across Departments- Customer service, POS, New Business
23. Solution
• Marketing and Lead Management System
• Touch point unification - call center, branch, email, web, mail,
SMS, portal
• Single system for managing Leads - New Acquisition Leads,
Cross-sell Leads
• Models for Intelligent Cross-selling
• Cross-sell campaign set-up
• Collections Management System (Business Conservation)
• Single system across Agencies both internal and external
24. Benefits
• Increased customer retention
• Improved inter-departmental teamwork
• Categorization of customers
• Availability of information on a single platform
• Business Conservation and New Business
• Profit goes up 402 percent - from Rs.51.79 crore to Rs. 260.31
crore.
• New business premium from traditional business at 45 percent -
up from 29 percent.
25. Benefits
• Customer Service Management
• TAT for customer service request has improved from 4.05
days to 2.74 days.
• Adherence to SLA has increased to 95%.
• Better process control
• Increased visibility through automated reports, escalations
leading to better control.
• Process consolidation of pre-submission calling, cross sell
calling, new lead calling, campaign designing
• Availability of information with regular updates on the
campaigns with offer statuses and customer information
26. SBI Life
• Background:
• SBI Life Insurance is a joint venture between State Bank of India and BNP Paribas
Cardif., wherein SBI owns 74 percent of the total capital and BNP Paribas Cardif the
remaining 26%.
• CRM Highlights:
• An in-house CRM system that serve as a complaint and lead management system
• SBI's CRM system handles customer complaints efficiently through multiple channels
• New CRM system has improved transparency, brought down complaint resolution time
and cuts across all customer touch points
• Allows a single view of the customer and follows it within the hierarchy
• SBI Life can efficiently service any query/compliant because they have a consolidated
view of all the past payments and history of customer interaction
• New system allowed to capture the initial interactions with potential customers. This
helped in understanding customer behavior; what people are looking for.
27. Benefits
• The central monitoring team helped in customer service
escalation hierarchy decision.
• It allows a single view of the customer and follows it
within the hierarchy, and offers a summarized view
• Improved transparency, brought down complaint
resolution time
• First insurer in India to complaint with IRDA rules
effectively.
28. Reasons for CRM Failure
• Customer – if clients are dissatisfied with execution
of CRM system
• Data – Data stored should be complete. Any
inconsistency can lead to problems
• CRM is implemented for enterprise & not customer
• Cost – Cost incurred in for support, maintenance &
ongoing upgrade. As business grows this becomes
quite expensive
• Security - A lot of security patches needs to get
installed. If not done on time it can lead to problems.
29. Failure in CRM Implementation – MetLife Insurance
PROBLEMS
• Happened when several databases across enterprise
were integrated
• Data organized around product groups & not
customers
• Data across systems was inconsistent
• Wanted to increase automation & amount of data
available to customers
• Goals of users was not explored
• Voice response system was installed
• Customer wish was not taken into consideration
30. Failure in CRM Implementation – MetLife
Insurance
RESULTS
• Resulted in customer attrition, wasted financial
resources, and lost opportunities
• The customer was not willing to punch through a
bunch of numbers
• Insurance agents complained of losing deals because
of poor service
• Cost of the implementation project ran into seven
figures
• Cost of implementation was less than the likely losses
suffered by MetLife due to loss of customer
31. Failure in CRM Implementation – Cigna
PROBLEMS
• Cigna HealthCare was operating with IT systems that
were nearly two decades old
• It had separate units for enrolment, processing
medical claims and verifying customer eligibility
• The customer information pertaining to medical
claims was spread across 15 distinct IT systems
• The claims and eligibility information systems were
not inter-connected
• Customer service representatives found it difficult to
process the 120 million claims per year that Cigna
HealthCare received
32. Failure in CRM Implementation – Cigna
RESULTS
• Develop an integrated system
• This system would
• Generate one bill across products and divisions
• Process the medical claims of customers
• Provide case histories of all the customers to the
customer service representatives
• Facilitate exchange of information with customers
33. Failure in CRM Implementation – Cigna
Where the system failed
• Failure in integration of huge database
• Implementation of system without optimally checking it
• The front-end applications, used by service representatives
could not retrieve data from the back-end systems easily
• The back-end database was not filtered and sorted out
• Customers also faced difficulties in obtaining information
relating to health coverage plans
• Cigna was unable to confirm the registration to customers
for many days
• Cigna issued identity cards with incorrect numbers and
services were provided incorrectly
• Cigna lost .89 million customers & $ 398 million in revenue
34. CHALLENGES
• Effectively collaborate with network of agents and
intermediaries to get better visibility of sales processes,
reduce cycle times and prevent revenue leaks?
• How to provide valid, up-to-date intermediary-wise
performance data to help relationship managers drive
revenues?
• How to influence corporate buying decisions, while
working to forward relationship width?
• How to ensure optimal service quality to customers
&intermediaries, across a multi-source eco-system?
35. CHALLENGES
• How to evolve a complete 360 view of customers along
with their policy holdings, risk profile, premium
payments, claims history, to judge true value
of relationship?
• How to tap complete household/ account potential to
offer personalized products as per requirement and
propensity, using cross-sell/ up-sell techniques?
• How to provide proactive real-time insights into
processes for actions, with intelligent reports
&dashboards?
• How to comply with ever changing insurance
regulations?
36. Conclusion
• Insurance sector in India is a booming sector and has seen a
tremendous growth in the past few years.
• Affirmative view of customers about owning an insurance policy
which proved that Insurance is the need of the day.
• Insurance companies have started developing specific CRM
initiatives to retain their customers.
• Policy holders also acknowledge the presence of such CRM
initiatives.
• Though many initiatives have been taken up by companies, still
CRM in the Insurance sector is at a nascent stage
• CRM solutions can go a long way in helping companies implement
effective measures to manage risks.
• CRM solutions can help the sales team make clear decisions