It’s the holiday season and you want to take your family on a nice vacation. So, you decided to go online and search for good deals on flight tickets and hotel stays. After extensive research, you finally get some great discounts on flight and hotel reservations on a popular travel site. You are very excited about the deal and happy that you were able to book both together on one site. However, you are a bit skeptical because you think that the deal was too good to be true. You think what if the flight gets delayed and you don’t make it on time. Will you lose your hotel reservations? Will you then need to forgo the money that you paid for the hotel bookings?
Let’s take another scenario. It's your 25th wedding anniversary and you want to surprise your wife with a brand new car. Again, you do a lot of research online and also visit a couple of showrooms to decide on the car that you want to purchase. You are happy with the deal offered by one of the showrooms and decided to purchase the car from there. At the time of purchasing the car, you think about what will happen if your brand new car gets stolen or damaged? The monetary impact of repairs can be very high. So, what do you do?
In both the cases above, a good travel insurance policy or a motor insurance policy, respectively can come to your rescue. However, you don’t wake up in the morning thinking that you want to buy insurance today. Instead, you wake up thinking about going on a holiday or buying a car or purchasing the latest mobile phone. The only time you actually think about the risk is when you are making a purchase. Being offered travel insurance on your way to work or car insurance when you are dining out will have little value and might even end up having a negative impact. On the other hand, being offered such insurance policies at the time of purchase will hold maximum value for you. This is where embedded insurance comes into play. Embedded insurance offers insurance solutions at a time when the risk is top of mind for the buyer. Correspondingly, it also brings insurers close to the underlying risks.
What is Embedded Insurance?
Embedded Insurance basically entails leveraging technology to abstract the insurance functionality and enable any third-party product or service provider or developer in any sector to seamlessly integrate innovative insurance solutions into their offerings either as an add-on (complementary or at a nominal cost) or as a native component. Embedded insurance can add value to all stakeholders in the insurance ecosystem as it enables access to more affordable, relevant, and personalised risk mitigation products.
Different Types of Embedded Insurance
Since embedded insurance is directly related to the purchase of a product or a service, the possibilities of embedding insurance are myriad. Some of the common ones include:
Travel insurance: Purchase insurance seamlessly while booking flight tickets or hotel stays to minimise the financial impact of flight delays, loss of baggage, cancelled bookings, etc.
Motor insurance: Purchase motor insurance, in addition to third-party motor insurance at the point of sale. For example, when you buy a car, you can also purchase a personal accident cover that offers you protection against death or disability caused by an accident. Now, instead of separately approaching an insurance company for such a cover, embedded insurance can enable you to buy it at the same time as you purchase your car.
Property insurance: Purchase home insurance for owned property or renters’ insurance at the time of signing the agreement.
Mobile/laptop insurance: If you are purchasing a laptop/mobile phone online, there is always the risk that you might receive the wrong model or maybe even a damaged model. On the other hand, even if you are purchasing electronic goods at a physical store, there is the risk of receiving damaged products. In such cases, mobile/laptop insurance, the cost of which is already embedded into the cost of the product, can prove to be very helpful.
Health insurance: Many people are hesitant to buy health products online because they find it difficult to verify the medicines and don’t have the comfort of their next-door chemist checking the medicines before giving them. Now, with embedded insurance, you can protect yourself against any unfortunate accidents in shipment in terms of the wrong medicines or expired medicines reaching you.
Cyber insurance: With the proliferation of digital interactions, cyber security and insurance has now become a must. Embedded insurance can allow you to purchase the required cyber insurance at the time of setting up the systems.
While the options are myriad, at present not all kinds of products can be embedded. Generally, for a product or service to offer embedded insurance, it needs to be simple, transparent, easily understood, and have a straight-forward claims process. Considering the importance of the insurance industry in the ecosystem and the access that it has to an individual’s personal data, companies need to strike a balance between offering a seamless and convenient process and ensuring that legal and regulatory requirements such as mandatory KYC checks, document verification, etc., are fulfilled. Nonetheless, insurers can aim to be at the right place and at the right time by embedding insurance in products or platforms that have a large customer base and selling them the relevant insurance products either at the point of purchase or at an appropriate time in the customer life cycle. If insurance companies are to truly leverage this opportunity they must collaborate with other ecosystem players, i.e., third-party partners and insurtechs, to enhance this value proposition by accessing and analysing the relevant data, performing real-time risk assessment, pricing policies accordingly, and thereafter embedding their products virtually at every point of the risk spectrum. For example, the TurtleFin API is a plug-and-play solution that can be easily leveraged by institutions and insurance intermediaries. It leverages the right technology to provide you access to accurate data which can help you keep track of your MIS and audit the relevant data. Due to its plug-and-play nature, TurtleFin’s solution requires minimal time for integration and can reduce the overall policy turnaround by almost 2/3rd. Further, not only does it reduce time, but also provides efficiency gains in the form of seamless digital journeys that require minimal paperwork.
The insurance landscape is indeed transforming and evolving into a more efficient, seamless, and customised ecosystem. However, for every stakeholder to contribute and benefit from this transformation there is a need to collaborate and potentially create exponential value.
Quick Solution: TurtleFin’s One API
TurtleFin has been digital-ready for a long time now; making it the largest insurtech company that pioneered the offline-online model in India. Our API meets the needs of its digital audience and creates a benchmark for optimally leveraging the right digital tools. TurtleFin is leading by adapting to new market trends and helping LFIs adapt seamlessly!
Benefits of One API
There are multiple benefits of using the TurtleFin API as it is a plug-and-play solution with technology and accurate data to help you keep track of your MIS and audit the same as well. With the lesser time required for integration, the overall policy turnaround reduces by almost 2/3rd, and that too with minimal paperwork as it is a completely digital journey.