A top company official of Bajaj Allianz Life has been quoted as saying that, due to coronavirus impact, the company is not expecting significant growth from the insurance industry this year. Customers however are more likely to buy policies online, the insurer said.
Tarun Chugh, MD, and CEO of Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance told PTI in an interview that, he thinks this is a year of survival and not everybody is likely to invest (in policies) when the GDP is not likely to do good. He also said that there will not be significant growth this year.
The insurance companies will need to adopt digital and virtual means of product selling going forward as the customer behavior will change a lot in the coming period, he added. He also said that corporates will take their call, to take it as a new normal, i.e lot of virtualization and digitization until a vaccine is found.
Now, customers are going to prefer face-to-face dealings, he said. And the trend is likely to remain so for at least a year and a half.
Chugh said that the company is re-learning, and re-training themselves as nowadays all are depending on virtuality and they will hence prefer those distributors and brands who are willing to work virtually and able to provide solutions as such. Apart from customers having their concerns, he said that even in this lockdown, the company is equally taking care of its employees also. The company has been supporting its employees in their work from home schedules and motivating them through social media engagements and webinars to keep them motivated through yoga and meditations.
Now as per the customers’ trend, the demand is more towards buying term policies he said. Customers are purchasing more of guarantee based insurance and more of term policies.
Considering the policy premium front, he said that the premium will not go up this year, for the policy premium will come down and if looking overall for the life sector he thinks that the premium will not grow at all. The pandemic has affected the whole world in one way or the other and the company is not expecting significant growth this year.
