Monday, February 5, 2024

Challenges in Bancassurance

Bancassurance accounts for an average of 36% of Life and Health (L&H) insurance premiums across six Southeast Asian markets – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The SRI also surveyed Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam markets, where 67% of consumers showed strong preference for insurance agents over banks, particularly for medical and hospitalization insurance.

Challenges - New challenges for bancassurance includes the decline in in-person visits to bank branches (accelerated during the pandemic), coupled with the rise of digital apps providing services like embedded insurance and increasing bank interest rates.

More than a third of consumers also expressed their main concerns regarding banks as sales representatives having weaker product knowledge and occasionally recommending products not suiting the customers’ needs.

At the same time, while 89% of the bank sales staff surveyed are confident in their insurance product knowledge, many find underwriting as well as the complex and technical nature of the onboarding processes most challenging when it comes to selling insurance.

Despite these challenges, 81% of consumers who purchased insurance from a bank expressed satisfaction in service quality. Additionally, 52% of consumers preferred buying savings products from banks over agents, likely due to the similarity between insurers’ and banks’ offerings.

Preferences & Training - Consumers are still buying more savings-type insurance products through bancassurance than protection products, which indicates an area for remediation.

To enhance bancassurance’s role in the region’s L&H growth, insurers need to improve bank sales staff training, simplify underwriting, use alternative data for underwriting, offer tailored products, and utilize digital channels.

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