The pre-lunch session on coping with digital disruptions focussed on the impact of growing digitalisation on various segments of the financial sector, including mutual funds, life and health insurance and credit information. Abhijeet Shah, head – marketing, digital and e-commerce, ICICI Prudential AMC, Mohit Goel, director - marketing, Exide Life Insurance, Dr. S Prakash, executive director, Star Health and Manish Sinha, India country head, Equifax India. The session was moderated by Narayan Krishnamurthy, editor, Outlook Money.

Dr. Prakash started by explaining the importance of the digital ecosystem for the industry for sales, maintaining records, customer service as also for keeping the loss ratios in check. "I foresee 60% of our business coming from digital channel by 2020," he predicted, giving an insight into the kind of disruption the digital mode is capable of bringing.

While most companies see the younger generation as the key target group, especially for the digital medium, technology is also throwing up data that hints at the risks. "The riskiest borrower segment is the young, single male with less than two years in employment," said Sinha.

The discussion moved to customer service in the times of digital medium, especially social media. Considering, it is common for investors at all levels to tag senior management these days when they take the social route to raising their concerns. "There are tools available to check what customers are saying about you. What do we do with the data? Our approach is to engage such customers and solve it," said Shah. He reckoned that it was a boon to companies. "In yesteryears, for this customer to be heard, he would have had to go through customer care, emails and phone calls. We have a mechanism in place to ensure that this data is attended to," he said.

Goel of Exide Life agreed with the view that social media was an effective tool. "The power of social media is huge. The average rate of addressing the complaint for us is 3-3.5 hours," he said, adding that the insurer has started using chatbots to resolve customer queries promptly.

While the adoption of the digital medium is growing, it has also given rise to concerns around breach of privacy. "What I have is customer data and under no circumstances should it be misused. The guidelines are stringent regarding this. Only specified set of users have access to it," said Sinha of Equifax, allaying fears on lack of data security. According to him, credit information companies collect data on individuals primarily from lenders, who also use it to ascertain loan-seekers' credit-worthiness. Publicly available information on social media sites like LinkedIn too could be factored into the credit profile of an individual. The audience posed several queries to the panellists to get their opinion, making the session very interactive and engaging.

preeti@outlookindia.com