India’s Leading BFSI and FinTech Companies 2021

61 India’s Leading BFSI and FinTech Companies 2021 Experts’ Views with the brand because of our products, processes and value added services. A huge facility to process claims in- house, offering cashless facility across 10,000+ hospitals, awell-trained teamof on-roll medical professionals to process claims efficiently has ensured that we have the best in class persistency rates of around 90%. Serving all the 1.6 crore lives who have trusted us over the years has been the moment of truth for us, especially during the pandemic. Our in house telehealth facility, proactively established as early as November 2019, was fully engaged in offering tele-consultations on all days of the week during the lockdown period. As health insurance specialists, we not only provide insurance covers for healthy lives, but also for impaired lives. Our products, specially designed for senior citizens, for known patients of Diabetes, Cancer, Cardiac issues, Autistic children, Micro segment have been well received. Needless to say, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted businesses across sectors. How has the company dealt with the pandemic situation in order to stay resilient? Dr. S Prakash: The strength of our distribution network, our frontline sales teams, our agent partners and other Channel partners had actively utilized our digital assets to seamlessly serve all existing customers as well as acquire new customers. We witnessed unprecedented growth during the lockdown, and this was possible since we were adequately prepared to ensure the continuity of our business. Despite all the challenges posed by the pandemic, the new normal, adoption of work from home culture, contactless transactions, absolutely limited mobility, restrictions imposed by Health Advisory, etc., our customers were served well. Our underwriting process was further simplified, of course without compromising on the quality. Optimum utilization of our portal for online submission claim documents by customers, facilitated in settling 1,17,894 (until Jan 2021) COVID-19 claims. Our customer care call center was fully functional, even during the lockdown phases, providing all the required assistance to our patrons and partners. Nothing stopped at Star Health. The situation created by this outbreak has made the common man aware of the importance of health care and more prominently Health Insurance. We are in the process of expanding our operations, especially in the rural markets, stepping up our investment in technology and also introducing new products and value added services. Has the pandemic led to any significant change in the general attitude and approach towards health insurance? What is your opinion? Dr. S Prakash: The pandemic has definitely created more serious awareness about the cost of health care, the need for healthcare, hygiene and health insurance. This is further endorsed by the fact that health insurance has emerged as the largest and fastest growing segment in India in recent times. Ease of purchase, simple and innovative products well stitched with wellness and other value added services, affordability and efficiency in servicing the deliverables will be the way forward to meet the expectations from across customer segments. The Regulator has already made inroads into these aspects by the introduction of a standard insurance policy – “Arogya Sanjeevani”, corona-specific benefits and indemnity policies, payment of premiumineasy instalments, digitization of documents and processes. We see tremendous scope for improvement in penetration of health insurance in India, especially to cover the middle income segment population who do not have any health expenditure support and are not covered by any public health insurance programmes either. What are some of the major prospects that you foresee for the health insurance sector in a post-pandemic world? Dr. S Prakash: Globally in the past, whenever there has been an outbreak of a pandemic, it has resulted in accelerated growth in the demand for health insurance for at least a few years. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an inflection point in terms of creating awareness for health insurance among all segments of the Indian society and it will definitely help in increasing insurance penetration in a country like India which is parched of this security. We are seeing an increasing number of people availing health insurance to protect their loved ones. Although the current health crisis is around the pandemic, there are risks of other diseases/conditions such as mental illness. Our Product Development team is constantly engaged in developing products for different focus groups, such as millennials, bite sized add-ons, disease/condition specific policies. Dun & Bradstreet