Aegon Religare files for more online insurance plans

Aegon Religare, which was the first insurer to introduce an exclusively online insurance plan in October 2009, is planning to introduce more such products.

According to company's chief marketing officer Yateesh Srivastava, it has already filed for an online health insurance plan with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), and is in the process of filing for another pure protection plan.

"The online plans have a significant pricing differential due to lower distribution costs, compared with offline products. For the same cover, online plans would be 58-60 per cent cheaper," he told newspersons here on Thursday. In the next two quarters, the company would introduce hybrid plans to offer a complete portfolio.

He announced the public launch of its online protection plan, iMaximize, designed for high networth individuals and carrying an annual premium of Rs 1 lakh and above. As part of a soft launch a few weeks ago, he said, the plan was introduced to its existing customers and received total first-year premiums of Rs 8.17 crore till now.

He said the customers were taking plans with higher sum assured online compared with offline. "The average sum assured for iTerm plan is Rs 60 lakh, compared with Rs 14-15 lakh for offline products. We have set a target of 10 per cent of total company premiums this year to come from online plans."

At present, the company's two online plans of iTerm and iMaximize account for 10 per cent of the number of policies sold and 6.5-7 percent of total premiums. iTerm has 15,000 customers. The global benchmark for online insurance plans as a proportion of the total was 12 per cent (average) to 15 per cent (best).

According to Harshal Shah, director (marketing), Aegon Religare, the insurance industry had seen a decline of 28 per cent in the June quarter compared with the same period last year, but was hopeful of growth in the full year.

"The industry is going through a phase of adjustment. It's not that customers are not going to come to ULIPs. The new regime is more pro-customer, and in the mid- to long-term we expect ULIPs will come back" he said.