Indian insurance Industry: “Success lies on the other side”

Anything and everything is growing in India. You open any market report and it will talk about how a particular industry is growing in India. Growth rate for any industry (except few) will be high enough to attract your attention. One such industry is Insurance. Insurance industry is fairly stagnant in mature markets. This industry has hardly ever produced exceptional return for investors, still it attracts investors – because it is “insurance”.
Insurance industry in India is growing at far higher rate than most of the other markets. Penetration is low – in non life it is very low-, which is an indictor that it will take years before the market reaches maturity. Growing economy and large population provide robust macro environment for the bright future of this industry.
However, behind this rosy scenario lies a chaotic reality. Indian insurance players are lost in the “labyrinth of numbers”. Every player is trying to expand in terms of size. However, most of these players are completely out of sync.
1. Why the hell you are wasting resource on winning competition: Indian players are competing against each other! They are wasting their energy in competition. Competition is inherent to any business without monopoly. However what Indian insurance carriers (both Life and Non Life) need is growth, which does not necessarily require competitive edge. Driven by mature market case studies and advisory firms, which are misguiding Indian insurance players by comparing apples to oranges, Indian companies are building their strategy focused on wining competition. In reality, in this market a carrier with sensible and focused business plan can grow at far greater rate for at least next 10 years.
What insurance companies in India need is two pronged strategy – business plan to access existing market and sound strategic model to tap latent market going forward. Indian insurers do not need to compete against each other to grow – they all can grow together.
They should dump this “fraud of competitive strategy” created by international advisory/ consulting companies and rather should focus on targeted products for untapped and existing market.
2. Isn’t it a fish market: Yes Indian insurance players are operating like fish market. Internal systems of the players are worse than even small grocery shop. One customer receives tens of calls from the same carrier – you receive call from the carrier to buy car insurance, you have already bought car insurance from. Internal process management such as customer acquisition and distribution is complete chaos. They are wasting their money like anything. Rather than wasting money on redundant processes and steps they can pass on the saving to customer through reduced pricing and can win customers.
Underwriting is archaic. Insurance is one of the few industries in India, which is still like third world industry. They hardly use any advanced methods of underwriting and renewals management.
3. Where are the right products: Indian players are not at all in sync with Indian value system. They are working on business model suited for fairly homogenous individualistic societies. Even China is not comparable to India for this industry. Majority of Chinese are Hun Chinese and use mandarin. India is far more diverse and value system differs dramatically across different sections. No one product will work in India. On top of that market that represents homogeneity is already captured by LIC driven by years of monopoly in Life Insurance market.
What insurance players require is products for heterogeneous sections of the society – they are still almost untouched. To bring such products they have to first segment the target group. In Insurance, Indian players should segment customers keeping different value systems in mind. This requires two level of thinking – how to make homogenous (upto the extent possible) groups and how can you approach these customers. Thus, this structure is far more complex than one can imagine. It can be certainly done be but that needs some expertise (I will not write on that).
The people who make strategy for Insurance players do not know 80% of India. Had it been other industry, one could have managed as 20% of India would capture more than 80% of value, but unfortunately Insurance works not on value but more on volume. Law of large numbers does not favor your lady luck if you are stuck with 20%.
4. Fabricated myths to cover lack of skills : “awareness level is low”, “people do not understand”, “most of them are illiterate”, “regulations are not favorable”. These are all fables! They have statistics to prove it, but in reality they are not just smart enough to think beyond traditional ideas. More than 600 mobile phones are there in India. Do you think all of these mobile users know how to read and write? Some people will argue that insurance is far more complex, but that proves my point even more. Insurance is so complex that it will work like a leveler. Most of the people – with or without higher education – are on the same level. What Insurance industry needs is many Intelligent and visionary leaders – not from Ivy League but people who know a small part of India.
More females voted in Bihar than male for the first time in last assembly elections. Illiteracy is far higher for females in Bihar. You need to know how to suit the value system, which requires simple but appropriate planning.
Players supported by advisory firms are taking refuse under statistics, but the real success lies outside statistics.

I have talked very generic and quite abstract in this article – not because specific steps are not known, but that’s with me and other people who do not take refuse under numbers.