MR Microinsurance_2012_03_29.indd - International Labour ...

314 Insurance and the low-income market
a claim. The efforts by Uplift and VimoSEWA described in Chapter 5 are good
examples of providing value to clients who do not submit claims, but providing
additional services might be costly and for product lines other than health insurance
might be of less direct benefit to insurers. Providing tangibility can be as
simple as offering a membership card and sending follow-up text messages with
information on the insurance policy.
Customer care
As products and distribution models become complex, the role of customer care
in microinsurance has become more important. In the past, this consideration
has been largely neglected and many microinsurers had not provided clients with
a way to contact them in the event of a problem or if they needed information.
Recently, however, insurers have been making a greater effort to provide support
to clients before, during and after a sale.
With advancements in telecommunications, call centres are being tested in
microinsurance and the clients of some schemes (CIC, Pioneer, ICICI, RSBY,
Uplift) have access to a toll-free number. It enables clients to understand the
basic features of the product at the time of purchase, establishes a feedback and
grievance mechanism, and allows them to check their policy status.
Customer care goes beyond call centres and just being close to the client. It is
about having an institutionalized process to provide satisfactory answers to clients’
queries, mechanisms for responding to grievances, and a system to monitor
and act on individual requests and complaints. For example, CLIMBS, CIC,
Uplift and VimoSEWA, among others, have made an effort to put in place structures
for customer care. This is often not the case with many community-based or
partner-agent schemes, which assume that being close to the client is sufficient.
15.2.5 Balancing trade-offs in a continuous improvement process
Many of the products include value-enhancing elements, though it is rare for one
product to score well on all of the client value dimensions as there is often a tradeoff
between affordability and enhancements in benefits, access and experience.
Client value improvements, however, do not always require an increase in premium.
They can also be achieved through efficiency gains, as many processes can
be streamlined. In fact, continuous improvement of client value was observed in
several schemes, including MicroEnsure and Uplift (see Boxes 15.4 and 15.5).
Client value enhancements should be strategic. There are intrinsic trade-offs
between client value and business considerations. A “balanced” value approach
across all four dimensions of PACE makes perfect sense for a client, but this
might not be the best choice for a microinsurer in a competitive environment
that wants to differentiate its offering.