Digit Insurance aiming for deeper market penetration
Hyderabad: In the current age of customisation where people are looking for services and products that are just a click away, the Indian insurance industry is not far behind. Earlier, buying insurance was limited to only life and health plans, and was targeted towards certain demography. But now, with the rise of the millennials, there is a definite trend towards customisation. Seeing this trend, Digit Insurance has been constantly redesigning products and processes. Vijay Kumar, CEO, Go Digit General Insurance tells Y V Phani Raj how the company is trying to disrupt the market.
Major milestones
Over the last four years, we have achieved various milestones. We are one of the first few insurers to be 100 per cent on cloud, turned profitable within just three years of operations, launched the industry-first Covid-specific insurance cover in late February 2020, and became India’s first unicorn of 2021. We were among the fastest general insurers to clock in $400 million in annual premiums within four years of operations. We brought down our turnaround time for cashless Covid-19 claims with an average of 44 minutes between April 2021 and September 2021.
Segment-wise trends
Since the start of Covid-19, there has been a strong growth in insurance, especially health. Between March 2020 and September 2021, we insured 4,250,320 lives under health insurance and sold over 1,180 group health policies. With increasing awareness and rising medical costs, we expect demand to go up further. In September 2021 alone, over 23,200 own damage claims were reported compared to 8,183 claims in May 2021.
However, demand from the private car segment is not growing as much owing to chip shortage faced by most carmakers. When it comes to property insurance which is a big segment for us, we are seeing good demand. Last year, we had clocked in Rs 325 crore in premiums whereas this year, we achieved this number just in the first half of the financial year. We expect our fire portfolio to grow significantly in the next few quarters. With travel becoming safer, we are seeing an uptick in demand for travel policies.
Market spread
As of September, we had over 46 branch offices across India and over 40,000 partners and intermediaries. Given our focus on simplifying insurance and offering need-based products, almost 40 per cent of our policyholders come from tier III cities. As digital penetration goes up further in the years to come, we believe our penetration will go up further in regions beyond metros.
Telangana presence
Telangana is an important market for us and therefore we are working towards improving our market share significantly over the next few years. We have a fair share in the motor and property segments. Currently, 90 per cent of our premia in Telangana comes from Hyderabad and we are now focusing on expanding our growth in the tier II and III cities. We have over 1,000 partners across distribution lines currently and with our focus on expanding in tier II and III regions of the State, this number is expected to go up further.
Expansion plans
We are currently developing an EV insurance product and are working with some of the leading manufacturers to frame the underwriting norms and understand the requirements that a customer would look for while insuring their EV. EVs come with components that are relatively more expensive than regular two and four wheeler vehicles and could therefore result in high-value claims. We are working extensively on finding the right price point while designing our product.
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