Ashish Mehrotra MD and CEO, MAX BUPA Health Insurance
Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) enterprises today are increasingly realising the need to digitise their operations and become a part of an interconnected ecosystem of cross-industry providers to meet the everyday needs of customers. In doing so, the role of telecom and IT is critical. As such, BFSI enterprises are stepping up investments in IT and telecom infrastructure to enhance operational efficiencies and meet customer demands. Leading enterprises in the BFSI industry discuss their IT strategies, current and emerging technology trends, and plans for upgrading their IT infrastructure…
How has telecom and IT helped banks enhance their business performance?
The BFSI sector has always been at the forefront of technology adoption and continues to make significant investments in new technologies. Whether it was core banking, customer relationship management and business intelligence or risk management and anti-money laundering, BFSI companies have embraced them all.
Max Bupa has a strong focus on utilising technologies to deliver best-in-class services and an overwhelming experience to its customers, partners and employees. It had made significant investments in technology and has an in-house development and support team to ensure agility and responsiveness to evolving business needs. Max Bupa’s IT systems have a robust architecture, are highly scalable and are hosted on multi-server Sun and Intel platforms in state-of-the-art ISO 27001-compliant data centres. In the past couple of years, Max Bupa has made significant investments in the Workflow and Document Management System (WDMS), mobility applications, core system (Maximus), underwriting system (HUMS), Dialer and data warehouse and business intelligence capabilities, ensuring that Max Bupa systems are future-ready. The company implemented Newgen Software Technologies’ business process management (BPM) solution to automate core processes like new business, claims, healthcare provider enrollment, agent licensing and renewals. These solutions enhance the customer experience through improved interactions and reduced customer response timelines. Newgen’s mobility application, ZapIn, has enabled end-to-end automation of the highly critical new business process, thus providing a uniform end-user experience. In doing so, Max Bupa became the first insurer in India to introduce a mobility application in its customer acquisition process.
What are the key enterprise services and solutions adopted by the banking sector?
Driving efficiency, effectiveness and business growth are the top business priorities for insurance companies today.
The following are some of the solutions that can be adopted by the insurance sector:
- More effective claims processing: The insurance industry has evolved from the days of reimbursement-based claim settlement by public insurers to cashless insurers in approved hospitals. For some time now, the health industry has been using intermediaries to bridge the gap between insurers and insured for hassle-free claims processing, provider network and utilisation review. This was simply to reduce the processing time for cashless claims. In line with its principle of service, Max Bupa took a stand to deliver 30 minutes cashless approvals, creating a new industry benchmark.
- Sales force automation: Most insurers have armed their sales force with tablet/mobile-based solutions that provide real-time access to carrier systems. The web-based portal contains business login reports, issued reports, commission statements, claims reports and renewal reports. It further enables the sales team to pull out policy documents, renewal notices and premium certificates. The portal is highly configurable and provides administration access for defining various roles and responsibilities. Specific user IDs for each sales code has been configured so that each sales agent views his specific area of policy details. The sales hierarchy is in-built in the system with a complete top to bottom view.
What are the company’s plans for upgrading its telecom and IT infrastructure?
Max Bupa ensures that it keeps pace with technological developments and makes continuous investments in maintaining a competitive advantage. We launched the Tab-based Policy Issuance over-the-counter application, which has made us the first health insurer to offer instant policy issuance through an online interface to bank customers. This is one of the key milestones in our journey to provide exemplar service to our bank customers. Over the years, we have strengthened our position as an IT leader in the industry and such initiatives open up a gamut of opportunities in enabling new business through innovative and responsive technology.
What are the emerging IT and telecom trends for BFSI players?
The pace of change in technology indicates that health insurance companies have more leverage to enhance consumer access and experience. With the government’s focus on Digital India, we expect the pace of internet adoption to accelerate. India should have half a billion internet-connected citizens by end-2016. This change is expected to have a positive effect on insurance. The cost of reaching consumers, providing information and processing claims seamlessly will reduce significantly.
