Finance Made Simple with Tarannum Hasib | Reforms on the Anvil in the Current Situation

Video Translation

Vivek Law: Hello and welcome to this very special series Finance Made Simple. Joining me today is Tarrannum Hasib who's the chief distribution officer at Canara HSBC Life Insurance. Thanks very much Tarrannum it's a pleasure talking to you. Let's talk a little about the pandemic, Tarrannum and one of the things that we saw. And the big change that we saw is that despite so much of disruption, the insurance industry continued to function. Claims were continued to be settled, policies continued to be sold all through the digital route even the medical checks you all quickly were able to move to a system where you could do it as a tele medical or a video medical. So, take us through a little about what were the learnings from the pandemic and how do you see them continuing going forward. Because there would be a lot of reforms that were brought in last year. Would you continue with them going forward and how has the pandemic changed the way you as a life insurance industry sells a policy?

Tarrannum Hasib: So, while pandemic brought its challenges and not only for the insurance companies but for the individuals also who were looking to purchase insurance. I think it was a different and a challenging situation but having said that it has actually given us in terms of long-term path for digitization. And I think all of us have really learned and it's surprising that when tough scenarios come your way how you innovate and learn to adjust to the new normal which I think the insurance industry did very quickly. So, we all found our different mechanisms to adjust to the new normal. Two three things which are really at the core is that while a lot of people go digitally to purchase insurance and they do a lot of journeys to understand the insurance products and we all know that insurances are emotionally complex product and business. So, while people surf on the internet to gather information they may not always purchase online they need a human interface. For insurance companies that is one thing which we learned very well to humanize the digitized version of insurance journey. And if you're able to do that even better, I think we have a winner on hand and the market is definitely changing from where we were before the pandemic. So, I think that is one big learning which we had and we progressed well on that part. The other thing which happened was customer service. Like you rightly said that we quickly moved to digital modes and a lot of internet, social media usage was done to reach out to the customers and maybe earlier customers who were not really savvy actually started reaching out back to us on multiple digitized platforms and digital platforms. So, I think both of us walk that path the customer as well as the insurance company. And I think one very important leg attached to insurance is the sales process because for an insurance company became extremely important for us to create sales journeys for different segments of people, different segments of customers, consumers and different age groups. So, while the younger customers are very tech savvy and they would go and understand a lot of products online but people upwards of maybe a certain age bracket are not so comfortable. So, we had to actually figure out sales processes to harmonize this experience for the consumer and I think we definitely learned a lot we walked a milestone there. But I would still say there is lots to be done in that way because our products especially the savings products unlike the term products are not so simple. They're a wee bit complex so to decode that via a video content or via a zoom call like we are on a zoom call we did many sales across zoom calls like that. So, to explain the customer everything to sharper crystal communication with transparency is something we worked on but I think as an industry there's a lot more to be done in this piece.

Vivek Law: Alright Tarrannum. We leave it there. Thank you very much for joining me and sharing your thoughts and perspective on a very important subject. Thank you once again.

Tarrannum Hasib: Thank you so much, Vivek. It was a pleasure, thank you.