HDFC ERGO General Insurance: The many benefits of flavouring BPR with digital

HDFC ERGO General Insurance has reimagined the business processes in the light of digital, keeping the customer at the centre. The results have been significant. The Turnaround Times (TATs) have reduced tremendously. Customer experience has enhanced and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) has also shot up.

An omni channel approach has contributed to these achievements. The customer can interact with the company on an IVR, call centre, website (including chatbot DIA), mobile app, etc. The online platforms of the B2B partners are also connected with HDFC ERGO’s system. A policy related change made in the partner systems seamlessly gets reflected in the company’s system.

“Recently, we have seen a huge jump in the number of customers using the self service mode to register claims, which we didn’t expect and the NPS on this service has been good. Now, we have started propagating it. We are targeting 80 per cent transactions to be completed on a self service model, which is at 65 per cent currently,” says Mehmood Mansoori, Head Operations, IT, Marketing & Online Business, HDFC ERGO General Insurance. The customers are comfortable in doing a monetary transaction, without talking to the customer service.

The most used platforms by customers for requesting service are website and IVR. Chatbots falls in the emerging category. The channel partners are also adopting digital platforms extensively. A query posted on an email or IVR can also be tracked online.

Digitally enabled insurance products
All high volume retail products – motor, health, travel, etc., are being managed end-to-end on a digital platform. While for certain products phone calls made by the customer service, there are many others that are served on a digital platform. “Our health product is so digitally enabled that the partners working for us can book a customer appointment with the diagnostics player digitally,” says Mansoori.

Underwriting is a critical process for a general insurance firm. The entire underwriting is automated. In case of a policy break-in, a link is sent to the customer and he can video shoot the vehicle and do the assessment on his own. The claim subsequently can be cleared on the same day, subject to completing certain conditions. In the healthcare insurance space, 70 to 80 per cent of the process is digitised. The healthcare underwriting is AI based. A few exceptional cases have human intervention and are subject to additional tests due to certain conditions.

About 92 per cent of the policies are processed digitally. It essentially means that there is no manual data entry done for processing them. The number of calls hitting the call centre have reduced to a large extent, informs Mansoori.

Active engagement with startups
HDFC ERGO is running an incubation centre and there are nine startups, shortlisted to work with the company – in the areas of imaging, blockchain, AI, etc.

The general insurance industry as a whole has reached a consensus on the potential of blockchain for the industry because from a customer standpoint, he is the same and is porting from one player to the other. Blockchain enables a more rounded view of the customer for every general insurance player who is a part of the general insurance blockchain consortium. “Although, as an industry, there are efforts being made to form a consortium, which will take time to reach a common ground, we have started experimenting with the technology,” concludes Mansoori.