Our Valentine's Day insurance policy is for two hearts: Aviva's Anjali Malhotra

While people gift flowers, candy, cards, jewelery, chocolates, among other things, Aviva Life Insurance has launched a product for couples this Valentine's Day to touch the heart.

The insurance company launched the 'Aviva Heart Care' campaign which would take care of the couples' heart conditions with one policy.

Anjali Malhotra, Chief Customer, Marketing and Digital Officer at Aviva India spoke to Collin Furtado about the new product launched on Valentine's Day for couples and how it could help them where other insurance policies can't. She also talked about the campaign, IRDAI norms, competition in the insurance sector, and demonetisation.

Tell us more about the exciting Valentine's Day product?

This is the first time we are giving an opportunity for BFSI guys to talk about something on Valentine's Day which typically is with matters of the heart.

India is the cardio vascular capital of the world and that there is nothing dedicated to heart care from an insurance standpoint in India. So clearly there is a gap. Most people believe if they have a medical policy they are in good hands. The truth is far from that as when people are struck by a critical illness like a heart attack, you realise there is a capping on sum assured.

The average sum assured is Rs 3 lakhs, which is insufficient. There was an other insight that many of the patients that come into hospitals are ill-prepared and that a large portion of the costs are not payed by insurers. Clearly that presented a huge challenge. As Indians we are genetically pre-disposed to it. We are trying to make products that are more responsive to today's consumer needs.

The product

The newly-launched policy is a heart care plan. It's a fixed payout policy where if you have a heart condition, you get a fixed lump-sum amount depending on the sum assured that you have gone for.

It is not linked to hospitalisation costs and is for expenses over and above what your mediclaim covers. This means you are not obliged to show proof of what expenses were incurred. So you can use it for your treatment and over and above that to cover for any loss of income because of an illness. If you need to sit at home and recuperate, then the money comes in handy. You can even take multiple claims within the sum assured.

The best part of the policy is that this is for two hearts. Why we did this is because both the couples' lives are important for the family. If you look at term insurance, more men are covered than women because there is more financial dependency on the men. But when it comes to the heart, we felt that both the hearts were equally important. So we created an opportunity to ensure two hearts. There is a 'Me' plan for one heart and the 'We' plan for two hearts.

What is the campaign that Aviva has launched for Valentine's Day?

Our campaign is in line with our brand philosophy of good thinking. We believe good thinking is about creating a healthy India and from a larger sense our commitment to our customers lives. We have launched the 'Healthy Heart Campaign' which is about “two hearts, one plan”. We have launched three TV films for the campaign. We did some work with Dr. Chauhan from Vedanta Hospitals on social media. We have also done a lot of customer contact programmes in malls where we got people to workout on treadmills, etc. to see if their heart is healthy. We gameified some of the activities in these malls. Through this we could suggest to some of the people whether they required to go in for a product like this or not. From a Valentine's Day perspective we targeted our message as two hearts is the best thing to give your spouse this valentine's day.

Is the premium on the insurance plan flexible according to how a person maintains their health?

In life insurance nobody has done that as there are certain IRDAI norms on that right now are restrictive on this. I do believe some general insurance players have done that. But if it can be implemented it would be good as the more closer you get to consumers' lifestyles today it would be helpful. There is a lot of distance to be covered in terms of creating newer propositions.

What are the ad spends on this campaign?

I would refrain from putting on a number on it. Suffice to say that we have a decent frequency where the target audience for us we will ensure that there is some OTS frequency to come, which is the measure we are look at. The brand has spend money after a very long time, so we have tried to do justice to our consumers.

With Q4 being the biggest quarter for insurance players, has demonetisation had an impact on your sales?

There is certainly no visible impact. If at all it will only be positive as more declared income means, more saving opportunities and thereby more investment in all asset classes.

Has the insurance market become over crowded and how do you take on competition?

I think it is both an opportunity as well as a challenge. Insurance has only a 2.6% penetration in the country, which itself is a huge opportunity. But the challenge really is that there are 24 players and there is a lack of differentiation. It being so heavily regulated the products end up being 'fairly me-too'. The challenge is how do we differentiate. At Aviva our approach is about understanding our target segment and how we can add benefits to their lives which are relevant to them. The heart care proposition is one of that, we have many more such propositions coming up.