Commonwealth Study Conference: Global leaders visit Policybazaar

A group of Commonwealth Study Conference (CSC) leaders visited Policybazaar’s office to learn about the journey of the company, what challenges it faced and how it is disrupting the fintech industry on September 26. Commonwealth Study Conference is a global leadership programme for exceptional senior leaders, selected from government, businesses and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) across 53 countries of the Commonwealth.

They collaborate to tackle challenges that businesses, governments and society face today and build the Cultural Intelligence and relationships needed by the leaders of tomorrow. The programme is a partnership between Common Purpose and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences (UK Fund).

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Each year, participants address a complex global challenge and this year, the Challenge is ‘What makes a city resilient?’ A group of leaders came to Delhi to experience the national capital’s resilience as a city through immersions in private, public and non-profit organizations and meeting experts and leaders from across the city.

The global leaders included Funmi Bucknor, Chief Executive Officer, HR madam Consulting;  Mwaba Kasese- Assistant Director (ICT), Governance and Compliance at Bank of Zambia among others.

From initial struggles to key successes, they learnt what makes India’s leading insurtech brand, a favourite of the customers. Keynote speakers included Alok Bansal, Co-Founder and CFO; Tarun Mathur, Chief Business Officer (General Insurance) and Dhruv Sarin, Head of Growth.  

How Policybazaar Started 

“Back in 2008, a small bunch of people with no insurance experience helped in transforming the industry. There was a lot of mistrust among people since they couldn’t find transparent insurance information and an option to research and compare products”, expressed Bansal. 

Around 10 years back, when buyers used to think of life insurance, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) was the only name that came to their mind. Also, there wasn’t much knowledge about term insurance plans. In many cases, agents used to sell policies for their own benefits and commissions rather than customer needs.  That’s how Policybazaar.com came to be, now India’s foremost insurance web aggregator. 

Policybazaar's huge growth in less time 

In the past 2-3 years, the platform has grown by about 70-80%. They have been able to achieve this with the approach that customer is the king – how we can bridge the gap between buying and claiming insurance and making the process friction-less.

To provide better solutions and to reach out to potential customers, they focus more on using tech and data services. This is done by analyzing the type of customers who visit their website. By segmenting the demographic, it helps them predict what kind of insurance a consumer would need. The main strategy behind this has been to employ ‘Pull’ rather than ‘Push’ strategy. By using this tactic, they have been able to enrich the customer experience by suggesting the appropriate insurance products. 

Being an insurance comparison portal, their website provides customer opportunities to compare various insurance plans and make an informed decision. This facility attracts the customers to the company’s website and aides them in their buying decisions.

Innovation is the key to success 

With the help of Policybazaar, customers can research and compare the features of different insurance policies within a category, which enables them to make an informed choice.

“Insurance companies also like us,” Mathur said at the event. Sharing an example of the seamless experience, he informed how 60% of the people who buy motor insurance on the platform do so without any interaction with an executive.

Responding to a query about cyber insurance, he said that there isn’t enough demand for it in the country as of now.  
Apart from this, consumers will soon be able to see an exciting innovation in motor insurance. The company is developing an Artificial Intelligence system which will inspect the videos sent by buyers for any dents or scratches. This will make the process even faster. 

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