New India Assurance, one of the largest general insurers has launched mobile apps to enable customers to renew their policies or buy new ones.
According to an estimate, 65 per cent of mobile users in the country access the internet through mobile phone and 40 per cent of them are "active" data users.
A senior official of New India Assurance said the company had launched two applications – one for the customer and other for the agent – on operating systems including Blackberry, Android and Windows.
“We launched the applications two weeks ago on a pilot basis. The New India Customer app is for customers who can get new policies or they can renew their current policy. We have already launched lot of mobility solutions", New India Assurance deputy general manager K Ravi Shankar said.
Stating that there was good response to the initiative, he said 20,000 downloads of the app had been made so far. Besides this, the company is also focusing on creating awareness among rural people on insurance products by launching a mobile van to reach the prospective customers in their place itself.
New India Assurance chairman and managing director G Srinivasan said the mobile van was flagged off from Madurai last week. "Our objective is to offer insurance policies even in a tier-4 towns. This mobile van will travel to remote places and offer our services", he said adding the plan was to extend the service across the country.
Noting that at present bulk of business was contributed by major towns and cities, he said future of general insurance was expected to come from rural areas and from micro, small and medium enterprise segment.
Cholamandalam MS General Insurance and Japan-based Mitsui Sumitomo Group also recently forayed into the mobile application space enabling customers to buy or renew their current health insurance policies.
The Chennai-based company launched 'Chola MS Wellness', targeting people using mobile phones that run on adroid- operating system. The company has allocated Rs 25 lakh towards this initiative and appointed an "external agency", Cholamandalam MS General Insurance managing director S S Gopalarathnam said.
Cholamandalam, which has insurance products across accident, health, liability, motor, property, travel and rural segments, was initially offering medical insurance through the mobile phone space. Soon, the app would be offered for other operating systems.
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