Vikas Mittal, Deputy CEO, and Amit Thapliyal, Chief Technology Officer, Magma HDI General Insurance:
Ravi Lalwani: The BFSI sector is rapidly shifting toward more personalized and digital-first financial services. What specific advancements or strategic changes does your organization plan to implement by 2025 to meet evolving market expectations? Are there particular markets where you aim to expand your presence or market share?
Vikas Mittal: Digital transformation in BFSI isn’t a recent shift or a matter of choice; it’s a continuous journey that has been reshaping the industry for decades. The real question now is not if companies will transform but how quickly they can align themselves with the accelerating pace of change. As customers increasingly demand seamless digital experiences, companies must evolve to stay competitive.
In this regard, Magma HDI General Insurance has been focused on providing seamless digital experience to our partners and customers. Some of the key initiatives undertaken and also ones in pipeline are:
For Partners: We have provided an intuitive portal dashboard integrated with critical databases such as Vahan, KYC, etc. that provides seamless policy issuance experience. We also have easy to integrate API kits for varied products, using which the Magma HDI General Insurance products become an integral part of partner’s digital ecosystem. Through regular feedback sessions with our partners, we keep finding avenues to better our digital offering for them.
For Customers: In order to empower our customers, we have provided tools such as self-service IVR and chatbots. These tools help the customers to interact with us in real time, from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day and have their service requests addressed.
All the services such policy sourcing, renewals, claims, etc. are available on our website and the customers’ issues are seamlessly handled by our call center team. To improve our accessibility, we have integrated with multiple platforms such as National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX), Bima Bharosa, etc.
As next step, in alignment with the vision ‘Insurance for all by 2047’ we are formulating products and distribution strategy powered with technology to penetrate into the rural market.
As you set financial goals for 2025, could you share specific targets, such as revenue growth, customer acquisition metrics, or cost efficiency ratios? How do you plan to leverage key market segments – like real estate, SMEs, or agriculturists – to reach these milestones?
Vikas Mittal: We have been growing faster than the industry over the last few years, and we expect the trend to continue. We have acquired more corporate clients this year than ever before, our heath business more than doubled in FY24, and our motor business continues to form the bulwark of our business.
Cost efficiency is one of the most important metrics. The Expense of Management regulation by the Insurance Regulator (IRDAI) is a step in the right direction, which is forcing a soul search amongst insurance companies.
Apart from these, there are a few of our favourite metrics that we like tracking to ensure best in class customer service like number of complaints received, percentage of service requests not handled by our chatbot or IVR and so on.
We have well-designed value-added services, products and propositions for market segments. For example, advising corporates on risks or providing a unique health top plan to individuals, to a Double Suraksha product to a commercial vehicle driver, to offering a low-cost home insurance product to people living in kutcha material built houses, we have been able to bring creative and useful products to customers. Our calling card has been innovating products for specific customer segments, and we hope to keep building on that capability.
Given the rapid digital transformation in BFSI, can you specify which technology initiatives you plan to prioritize by 2025? What are your key milestones, and how do you plan to measure ROI in terms of operational efficiency or customer satisfaction?
Amit Thapliyal: Data is and will be the foundation for all digital initiatives and the immediate plan is to put our organization’s data into a structure to gain actionable insights. This will enable optimum utilization of new age technology be it AI, ML, API or bots to drive efficiency and faster responses to our partners and customers.
With all of these in place the organizations nimbleness to adapt to the changing ecosystem and demand will be achieved much faster. ROI of such investments are best judged by the GWP growth and market share with minimal or zero manpower growth.
With customers increasingly seeking personalized, on-demand financial services, what innovative solutions or digital experiences (e.g., self-service portals, virtual assistance, or app-based financial planning tools) are in the pipeline to enhance customer experience by 2025? What metrics will you use to assess the success of these initiatives?
Amit Thapliyal: Mobile transactions and solutions have crossed ~80% of all traffic we see. As mentioned earlier, data will be the foundation and being part of a regulated industry, service differentiations will drive the growth and stickiness of the customers. With insurance being 3 decades old, the problem of system of records has been solved and the industry is focusing on systems of acquisitions and service. We have a roadmap to build all our acquisitions and servicing capabilities on mobile platforms with a DIY vision.
As cybersecurity threats escalate, how is Magma HDI strengthening its defense mechanisms? Do you plan to invest in specific technologies (like zero-trust architecture or AI-based threat detection) or achieve industry certifications by 2025? Could you also share any KPIs related to data breach reduction or customer data protection?
Amit Thapliyal: At Magma HDI General Insurance, we have a deep focus on cyber and info security with a dedicated team and a partner ecosystem. These are reviewed on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to keep benchmarking and improving our Security posture.
We would be getting ourselves certified for 27001 in 2025 to make our commitments to our partners and customers stronger. The DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act will further address the industry level challenges on data consent, breach and protection.
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