Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Anisha Motwani

Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Max New York Life Insurance, speaks to Steven Philip Warner and Manisk K. Pandey about the company’s segmentation, advertising and differentiation strategies and on why insurance means “need-based” selling.

Within just three months of joining Max New York life Insurance in the Fall of 2007, the former veteran marketer at General Motors, Anisha Motwani, changed max’s tagline from “Your Partner for Life” to “Karo Zyada Ka Irada”, to ensure a greater emotional connect with the consumers. It worked. especially to create a more customer-centric focus and to drive a greater value for the consumer...

B&E: Life Insurance companies have seen a sharp rise in the number of warnings and penalties issued by IRDA in 2010 for violating regulations. The regulator issued warning and penalties to eight life insurance companies in 2010, as against one in 2009. What’s the reason behind this sudden rise in conflicts?
Anisha Motwani (AM): We don’t see this as a conflict. No doubt, some companies have been penalised, but that’s not because of the way they have been functioning. Some reporting mistakes could have led to these kinds of penalties. For instance, there was a company that was penalised because it did not report the change in its shareholding pattern. Such conflicts may not come to the surface due to only customer-related issues. There can be varied reasons too. But yes, as the industry matures, IRDA demands us to be more customer-centric and that’s what we are doing. For instance, we have already launched a CRM initiative called Gold Circle, through which we are trying to create a personalised experience for our customers. In fact, we support all the changes to be more customer-centric because we believe that customer focus starts with “need-based” selling of life insurance, a practice which MNYL was following till date. IRDA will shortly make this need-based selling concept a law, forcing every agent, advisor or distributor to conduct a need analysis before they sell a product. Agents will have to show that why they have sold a product to a customer & whether it meets his particular life-stage need.

B&E: After setting stiff norms for ULIPs, IRDA is planning to cap charges on traditional products in the near future. What impact will it have on the industry?
AM: It’s still not confirmed. I think this is a speculation. But yes, whatever changes come and if they are customer friendly, we will adapt & evolve to embrace those changes.

B&E: Max New York Life (MNYL) follows the principle of ‘Young Parent-Old Parent’ in its market segmentation plan. How does it help you take advantage of a vastly under-penetrated market like India, where the life insurance penetration rate is just 4%?
AM: Insurance is a long-term product, and it actually spans through multiple life stages of the consumer. So the earlier you start a relationship with a customer in his/her lifes, the better it is from a long-term customer acquisition stand-point. Therefore our focus is on the Young Parent-Old Parent segment, which spans across people between 25-40 years of age. This makes sense for us as the people who are 25+ certainly present us with the opportunity to cross-sell life-insurance solutions to them as their life evolves, and the people who are 38-40 years old still have approximately 15-20 years of working life and are viable prospects to persist with a 15-20 year life insurance contract. Our core target group preference is the 25-30 year segment, which helps us make sure that we have as many people as there are to come in. India, as you know, is a young market. Therefore, this segmentation strategy is working very well for us.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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