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| Max Bupa: Get your health on track |
| Sayantani Kar / New Delhi May 17, 2010, 00:12 IST |
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A young boy collects clocks of all shapes and sizes through the day in a single-minded surreptitious way. He doesn’t want to give away his intent before it is time. Next morning, his parents wake up to a cacophony of alarms, all those clocks he had collected go off at the same time. Their child waits by the bedroom door with a pair of sneakers: A wake-up call for his dad to go jogging. This is the inaugural campaign of Max Bupa, the latest entrant in the health insurance sector. It does not want to harp on its products but remind consumers of the need to take care of their health.
Max Bupa, owned 74 per cent by Max India and 26 per cent by Bupa of the United Kingdom, has entered the market when it is small — only 2 per cent of the country buys medical insurance. Clearly, the upside is huge. Premium income touched Rs 8,300 crore in 2009-10. Rivals in the market include all general and life insurers as well as standalone health insurers like Apollo Munich, Star Health and Allied Insurance. Max Bupa is targeting one million customers in the next five years. It has decided to invest about Rs 700 crore during the period, and is currently capitalised at Rs 150 crore.
So what is different about Max Bupa’s strategy? The company, according to Max Bupa Director (marketing) Shefali Chhachhi, had researched 22 cities last year, which showed that customers were vary of settling claims with third-party administrators (TPAs). “We have eliminated TPAs for claims. The company will directly deal with the claims. We have also worked towards bringing more transparency in what is being purchased by the consumer,” says she. Max Bupa has decided to directly partner with 383 hospitals in the process, a number it wants to increase to 600 by year-end.
Most insurers have realised the dissatisfaction with TPAs; that can’t be Max Bupa’s USP. So, it has worked on some more innovations. Max Bupa has, for instance, enabled insurance at any age, though few above 75 (the average maximum age that health insurers cover) go for insurance, point out analysts. There are family floaters, which Max Bupa CEO Damien Marmion calls a local innovation. The insurer has also brought in the concept of insuring a new-born child and its vaccination under maternity claims in individual insurance policies, which had been in the domain of group policies so far.
The company has hired 1,000 agents, and plans to increase their strength to 3,000 by the end of the year. The insurer has divided the country into three zones — Mumbai, Bangalore & the National Capital Region and the rest of India — to fix the premium, depending on the cost of living in these areas. There could be a difference of 5 to 10 per cent in premium for various locations. It has launched in six cities; the target is to reach 16 cities in about two years.
The campaign is the first step Max Bupa has taken. But is the ad not reminiscent of other categories such as health food and cooking oil? Harish Bijoor Consults Inc CEO Harish Bijoor does not think so. “The differentiator from any other similarly-themed ad is the creative device of the alarm clock and of the child taking care of the adult, which is reverse psychology,” says he. “It is also a consumer-friendly ad rather than a marketer-friendly ad which enumerates the policy features.”
The campaign also has an on-ground activation leg that is taking free BMI (body-mass index) checks to residential colonies. The insurer has also introduced buying and underwriting policies on the phone.
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