Going digital has benefits for enterprises, but shifting the entire offline process into a mobile app may be worth even more as private life insurer Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance discovered in its ongoing digital journey.

The decision to move its entire insurance consultants’ (agents) hiring process to its mobile app iRecruit is paying rich dividends for the company.

In a little over one year since the launch of iRecruit, this private life insurer has created a record of sorts on-boarding over 15,700 insurance consultants digitally, after processing over 33,000 applications online.

“The launch of iRecruit has helped us cut hiring time by half as now we can on-board agents digitally in flat 14 days as against an average of 30 days in the manual login processes earlier,” Tarun Chugh. Managing Director & CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, told BusinessLine. It has made the entire agents’ recruitment process simple and paperless.

“In the next couple of years, we hope to get more tech-savvy advisors who can buy in with the company’s digital processes easily,” he said. From filling the initial hiring application to KYC validation of new hires, from regulatory training and scheduling examination of the new hires, and finally to licensing — all this can be done on iRecruit app, according to Chugh.

Quality agents

“iRecruit has helped us save costs, although this is only an incidental benefit. This has given us an edge as an agent who is anywhere in the country can now become an advisor. Hiring of quality agents has become easier and transparent,” he said.

The life insurer does not any more accept paper-based application for insurance consultants (agency) enrolment. “Even 40-year-olds who are not comfortable with tech will have to learn the ropes,” he said.

Chugh said that the life insurer is now focused on transforming itself into an entirely digitally enabled agency.

“Lot of work that the company is now working on is digitisation. For instance, the process around claims is digitised, but there is always scope for improvement,” he said.

Asked as to what would be the next focus area for the life insurer on the digital space, Chugh said that effort will be to use ‘social media’ to see if an existing advisor could be used to get other advisors and customers.

Lower bottomline

For the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2019, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance reported a net profit of ₹112 crore, down 35 per cent over the net profit of ₹171 crore in the same quarter last year.

In 2018-19, this life insurer’s net profit was down 30 per cent at ₹502 crore (₹716 crore).

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