Thursday, November 1, 2012

Plain Insurance Agreement

Insurance companies should simplify the products they sell and make them transparent for customers, according to Swiss Re managing director (property and specialty) Asia Mike Mitchell.

“Insurance companies must know what their consumers are looking for. Simplicity of products is important and they should be tailored to meet the specific demand of the consumers,” he said at one of the panel discussions at the 26th East Asian Insurance Congress here yesterday.

He added there was a pent-up demand for life insurance products based on a recent survey by Swiss Re. The findings revealed that the aggregate mortality protection gap across 12 insurance markets in the Asia-Pacific region had expanded significantly over the past decade from US$16 trillion in 2000 to US$41 trillion in 2010.

The study was intended to encourage the life insurance industry to better engage with the public in Asia and educate them on the importance of life insurance matters, he added

Mitchell said the survey also showed that consumers were willing to buy life insurance products at or above their market value and it was important to make the consumers aware of the products.

Chartis Singapore Insurance Pte Ltd chairman Leslie Mouat felt that it was the duty of the insurance industry to act upon customers needs so that pricing of insurance products was robust and accurate.

To this end, he said communication on the right products to customers was vital for the development of the industry moving forward. He said agents, as intermediaries of insurance companies, needed to trained accordingly.

ACR Capital Holdings Pte Ltd of Singapore group chief operating officer and group chief underwriting officer Clarence Yeung said agents represented the insurance companies when selling products to consumers.

The key here, he added, was to switch from merely selling insurance products to that of meeting what customers wanted in a product.

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