Page 26 - Insurance Times August 2018

market situation in Insurance Industry aims basically at
consumer satisfaction and hence insurance market in India
must examine consumer satisfaction as the prime duty.
Consumers must become a customer only by Quality Service
and since the market has opened up for more players, the
monopoly of the public sector insurers has simply vanished
and now each insurer must strive hard to retain the
customers and also more consumers to their fold. This is
possible only if we provide quality in service. Therefore,
insurers must evolve level of satisfaction in their service.
There may be two types of situation as follows :
i) Insured who have met with casualty and require
indemnity from the insurer;
ii) Insured who have insured themselves but expect
benefits even when there is no claim.
In setting the standards in service and quality management,
insurers must examine the above two situations. The first
situation is more relevant to general insurance though there
would be few segments in life insurance industry too. The
second situation is almost common in life insurance industry,
and to a limited extent, it also exists in the general insurance
industry.
International trend in insurance is facing the challenge and
with financial services converging more closely there is more
competition not only from the competitors but also from
other financial service providers. The insurers over a period
of experience set determined processes to provide service
under the above two situations. Hence process control is
very important in insurance operations to achieve quality in
service.
Due to the competitive market situation, with the rapid
development of technology and science -
the insurers are definitely exposed to their
impact. However, due to the erstwhile
monopoly position enjoyed in the General
Insurance Market, the Indian PSU General
Insurers although compelled but does not
allowed to comply with this impact, since
the introduction of private bunch of
players in the market and this impact will
have a greater jolt after the merger of
three companies unless adaptation in this
regard is done quickly. Let us briefly
categorize the likely effect in to the
following aspects:
26 The Insurance Times, August 2018
i) Reduction in employee's strength - the existing
organization, though giant in size, must realize that the
dinosaur which was the biggest animal on earth in the
yester years, is now extinct. It could not adjust to
changing environment and as such were wiped out.
Insurers must take note of this and must realize the
impact of present environment and adapt to changes.
ii) Restructuring - With the back drop of merger, changing
context of technology, organization must restructure
their operations. This requires hard decisions.
Redeployment, exit policy for huge surplus workforce,
productivity requirement, and many restructuring
activities to enable the organization to cut costs and
unit costs of their insurance service along with making
it more competitive.
iii) Information Technology & Communication - all the
BPR Concept like Oriental's initiative on "Nayi Disha",
National's initiative on "EASI Roll out", even all the BPR
initiatives taken by United India have to be brought
under a common parlance / platform of IT very quickly
since Information technology is a powerful tool in
insurance business operations --- quality in service can
only be introduced through technology. Technology
bridges distance and world becomes smaller and quality
in services can be introduced by effective use of IT and
communication.
iv) Competition - The emerging situation of competitive
market in insurance forces all players to readjust their
operations, Effective quality service will be offered by
the existing players as well as the news players must
evolve a strategy to introduce innovation and improve
productivity to keep pace with the market. Like 'Star
Health' is dominating the Health sector due to this. ICICI
is thriving in 'Weather Based Insurance'.