You don’t have to reach out to an agent, or a broker anymore to get an insurance cover. Buy groceries, make a bank transaction, get a phone recharge or an oil refill — transactions that entail a free loyalty product — and you can get an insurance cover.
IndiaFirst Life Insurance will soon make insurance cover a loyalty product, which will be available with your day-to-day purchases.
IndiaFirst plans to sell insurance as a loyalty product. It has received approval for Hospicash — a fixed benefit hospital cash product.Hospicash enables a group to offer its members benefits for staying loyal and committed to them. The product can be offered on a monthly mode with a minimum group size of 50 members. The premium of the product can be as low as Rs 3.33 (exclusive of tax) per month.
The company will be associating with B2C entities like super markets, telecom providers and e-commerce companies. “We can partner with any company, which offers loyalty programmes. The customer will not have to pay any additional amount as premium, but can avail the benefits of the cover,’ said Rushabh Gandhi, director, marketing and sales, IndiaFirst Life Insurance.
“For the partner company, this is a unique offering that can provide healthcare benefits and term cover, which in turn will boost the loyalty programme and encourage the customers to choose it over the competition,” he added. In case of Hospicash, the customer gets cash payout when he is hospitalised.
According to him, insurance as a loyalty product has worked well in several markets in Africa and Bangladesh, especially those offered by telecom service providers. For a nominal increase in the top-up amount a prepaid customer can get an insurance cover.
In Africa, Airtel launched a loyalty programme for its customers in January 2014. The customer would get free life cover, accident cover and hospital cash if he tops up $2 per month for his prepaid mobile connection. More than nine million people have signed up for it across seven countries in Africa till end of 2015.

MTN, too, launched its Mi Life programme in 2009 in Africa. The focus was to drive uptake of mobile accounts and transaction on MTN’s Mobile Wallet. It provided life cover for regular small premiums. After 12 months of the launch the programme had around 10,000 active clients.
In Bangladesh, Grameenphone introduced Nirvoy Life in June 2013 as a free life insurance product to drive loyalty. Over 4 million people have enrolled by end of 2015 and 10,000 sign up every day.
"The market is huge as every other Indian makes such purchases on a regular basis. Even a small portion of the pre-paid mobile customers or those buying groceries from supermarkets is huge,” said Gandhi.