Thought Leadership article by Prawal Kalita Managing Director, Marsh India
What impact will technology and digitization have in the corporate insurance broking model? What is the future?
Corporate clients have an array of needs in risk management, health & benefit insurance, and wellbeing. Every industry sector and client segment has unique needs and businesses are getting more complex and markets are evolving rapidly. Clients demand specialty approach and we do believe that technology and digitization can sharpen the specialty approach of brokers further to enable more value driven solutions for corporates. We believe that the brokers of today will succeed and grow faster by adopting tech enabled solutions to manage clients evolving needs and more attention is needed on innovation and digitization to see better tomorrow for our clients, partners and ourselves. If we have to speak specifically around health & benefits, we at Mercer Marsh Benefits have introduced best in class HR Tech solutions in India with advent of Darwin today as a globally scalable technology available for Indian enterprises to enable superior consumer experience, automation, offer more choice with a marketplace, advanced analytics & data center and finally a fully integrated solution to manage health & benefits. Globally we made this move way back in 2016 with acquisition of Thomson Online Benefits whose flagship tech solution, Darwin today is embedded into MMB globally and in India too
How are MNC brokers in India like Marsh, benefitted from 100% foreign partner ownership, allowed by the regulator?
We believe this move will help the existing foreign insurance brokers in India to leverage their global expertise further. With the rise of the digital economy, the risks faced by policyholders are changing. The creation of innovative solutions which keep pace with emerging risks is the need of the hour. For our clients, growing supply chain challenges, a heightened cyber threat, and the impacts of the pandemic mean that they need the very best risk and insurance advice to help them navigate an increasingly complex risk landscape. As the Indian economy continues to grow, global leadership and investment will enable us to further develop our client offering especially in sectors providing significant opportunities such as healthcare, infrastructure and construction, technology, and the sharing economy. Similarly, this will also lead to a more competitive pricing environment for the benefit of policyholders, and result in a wider array of product and services offerings. Competitive pricing is no longer the only criterion for policyholders due to a growing emphasis on the quality of service offerings and add-ons. The perceived role of an insurance broker is slowly changing from being majorly considered as price discoverers to providing holistic risk advisory and insurance solutions.
As a leading insurance broking firm what are your expectations from the India Insurtech community and the IIA forum?
Indian insurance industry (Life and Non-Life) is growing and would continue to grow. India is still an under-penetrated society from an insurance perspective if we compare versus developed nations. As a broking firm, it would be interesting to know what are the leading digital & innovative trends that are taking shape, and how can the broking community collaborate with insurers and other stakeholders in the ecosystem to give the right solution to clients with an aim to increase the insurance penetration. Also would like to understand on the newer initiatives with the new & liberal regulatory regime for Insurance business under Gujarat-based IFSC.
Author: Thought Leadership Article By Prawal Kalita Managing Director, Marsh India
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of IIA and IIA does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.