Aegon Life Insurance Company is in talks with financial services companies that have a digital focus and are keen to board customers online, a top company official said. This private life insurer is “aggressively” scouting for more partners, including fintech to expand its digital business, Saibal Ghosh, Chief of Investment & Business Development, Aegon Life, told BusinessLine here.
It may be recalled that Aegon Life had done away with both agency and bancassurance channels and decided to focus only on digital and direct channels. Ghosh made it clear that Aegon Life is “not into the numbers game and will not look to scale up industry rankings, say, for new business premium growth or market share”.
The aim of Aegon Life is to be known as a new-age customer-first company. “We cannot become a Northwest Mutual overnight. But their customer-first strategy has played out well for them. We are trying to build a business where there is pull factor and not push factor,” Ghosh said. He said Aegon Life has embarked on a project named ‘SIMPLE’ to simplify the product, the journey, and the application process and ensure there is a simple on-boarding and claim settlement process. This company is also evaluating whether medical check-ups are worth it or not before on-boarding customers. Ghosh said that “digital ramp up” will be the key focus and the company will look to get digital partners who can help expand the digital business. “Our objective is clear. Going forward, we want to grow our business at a higher pace than industry growth. If industry is growing at 15 per cent, we want to grow by, say, 20 per cent.”
The ambition is towards increasing the number of policies and writing more protection business, which is profitable, he added.