22nd Sep 2008 - Internet channels come with an inherent advantage- the data capture and analysis is something that can be done effectively and continuously.


We at BimaDeals.com, recently asked ourselves this question "What is it that our customers want?". Well, they all were looking for either information on insurance or were keen on buying some insurance products.


But we wanted to dig deeper and find out,
- What product types are being sought?
- What is the end-use of the Insurance product i.e. who or what life stage does the product address?

Findings:
It was very surprising for us to find that almost 58% of Insurance seekers were NOT sure of the specific end benefit that they wanted to derive from owning the insurance instrument.
Amongst the ones who were specific in their requirement, Pension security emerged as the most sought after benefit, closely followed by economic security to Children and finally Tax-saving.

Now this might sound counter-intuitive, but here's some of our explanations:
- A large chunk of Insurance seekers are specifically looking for ULIPs (see the graph below) and this segment is not very clear of the benefits apart from the investment opportunity.
- Tax Saving is a low priority - given the months for which data is collected. Had the data pertained to the first quarter of a calendar year, this would have been a higher percentage.
- Pension & Children plan are up there in the preference, partly due to the high decibel campaigns run by most insurers- specifically targeting these benefits.

Findings:
As expected most insurance seekers are looking for ULIPs and this is very much in line with the recent product distribution declarations by most insurers.Term plans form the next big chunk. A qualitative input, will spell out the opportunity here very clearly- most customers who wanted ULIPs were not sure of the product features and how to evaluate ULIPs.

Our Methodology:
We took data of all customers who came to BimaDeals from across channels and who were keen on buying an insurance product. The sample data encompassed applicants across all locations and age-groups in the last 3 months.


The "keeness" is judged by the telecalling process that filters cases where the customer is only looking for information. As a process all Life Insurance leads are called almost real-time wherein our agents check the customers intent to purchase an insurance product.


Possible skews in data:
- Since BimaDeals is an online platform, all applicants were comfortable with Internet. This is typically assumed to have a skew towards higher educational and income levels.
- Although we did not filter for specific locations, but given that most of the traffic comes from top 8 cities, the trend would have a metro-bias (if the same exists).