Allianz Goes Micro

JAKARTA: In an effort to reach out to low-income market segments, private life insurer Asuransi Allianz Life Indonesia launched on Tuesday a micro insurance product that allows customers to pay their premiums using electronic money via mobile phones. 

With the newly launched “Sekoci” product, named after the Indonesian word for lifeboat, the firm said it was hoping to attract 5,000 new customers in the next six months. 

To help customers manage their products more easily, the company is cooperating with telecommunications operator Indosat Ooredoo to allow product owners to pay premiums using Indosat Ooredoo’s Dompetku money transfer service via mobile phones. “It is not easy for people to buy insurance without having something tangible. This is when we decided that we wanted to partner with Indosat,” Allianz Life Indonesia country manager and CEO Joachim Wessling said, adding that the company was targeting people with a monthly income of around Rp 2 million (US$153.42).

The company did not disclose the premium rate for the new product, referring to it only as “insignificant”. 

Yoga Prasetyo, the company’s head of credit and emerging consumers, said his firm would pay Rp 5 million to the beneficiary should the insured die of an illness and Rp 25 million should the insured die in an accident.

Allianz Life claims to have 5 million customers in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation with more than 250 million people. The revenue contribution from the micro insurance industry, however, currently stands at only 1 percent, Yoga said