HDFC Standard Life Insurance Online Point of Sales system

Online POS systems such as HDFC Life’s Click2Buy, enable faster policy processing, improved customer purchase experience, and increased business productivity

HDFC Life has always believed in the use of technology to improve efficiency and reduce cost. To allow customers/agents to buy insurance online, HDFC Life launched its online Point of Sales system for its distribution channels in 2012. The system branded as ‘CLICK2BUY’ enhances the customer’s insurance purchase experience and also helps to increase the productivity of HDFC Life’s distribution channels.

For HDFC, CLICK2BUY is a long-term step towards faster policy processing, improved customer purchase experience, and increased business productivity. It is a sales tool with the objective of simplifying the insurance purchase process for customers, helping the sales team to submit a zero-defect proposal online via the Internet. The system is driven by a state of the art rules engine, which ensures that every question required for underwriting a proposal is asked up-front.

This system is already proving to be a game changer for HDFC Life and has won the Asian BFSI Award 2012 in the ‘Underwriting Initiative of the year’ category, the Celent Model Insurer Asia of 2013 and the Celent Model Insurer in the Underwriting Category.

HDFC Life’s CLICK2BUY initiative is an example of the transformative power of technology to improve the customer experience and increase business productivity and efficiency. Significant benefits provided by the project include:

• Increased equivalent premium income by 55% from January to September 2012.
• Increased policy issuance from 44% in December 2011 to 75% in August 2012.
• Reduced customer-initiated withdrawal from 55% to 4%.
• Average TAT has come down. For example, TAT for a life insurance product was reduced from 34 hours to 15 hours.
• Improved end customer service:
  o Streamlined sale process and reduced policy issuance time.
  o Document solicitation has been converted to a single step, reducing customer frustration.
  o Less “form filling” time required for existing customers, since the demographic information need not be recaptured.
• Improved internal customer service:
  o Issues such as handwriting illegibility, overwriting, correction, etc. have been eradicated.
  o The need to follow up with customers’ supporting documents (as and when they are raised) is reduced drastically.
• Green IT:
  o Promotion of Green Policy & Green Credit points.

Customers are rapidly evolving and so are the rules of engagement and serviceability in a digitally-driven marketplace. For insurers, listening, empowering and ultimately delighting self-navigating customers at every touch-point will be critical for building a sustainable customer engagement ecosystem. Historically, insurers have been great data keepers, but now they need to leverage data and technology to build capabilities like HDFC CLICK2BUY that improve productivity and efficiency and catapult customer experience to the next level to make the process simple and efficient. Since the balance of power is shifting from carriers to customers, we believe that the insurers who don’t have the right tools, technology and infrastructure in place to deliver a personalised, omni-channel customer experience will be in a tough spot to compete in the future.

Celent Model Insurer

Celent Model Insurer Asia

HDFC Launches Click2Buy