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ADVERSITY WILL ALWAYS CREATE OPPORTUNITY, SAYS PRADEEP SATYA

Pradeep Satya, founder and CEO of Synergy Strategic Solutions, in an exclusive interview with NewsX, shared insights from his professional journey through a special programme NewsX India A-List. Pradeep is on a mission to transform the insurance industry like never before. Pradeep started Synergy Strategic Solutions in 2011. According to him, they set out to […]

Pradeep Satya, founder and CEO of Synergy Strategic Solutions, in an exclusive interview with NewsX, shared insights from his professional journey through a special programme NewsX India A-List. Pradeep is on a mission to transform the insurance industry like never before.

Pradeep started Synergy Strategic Solutions in 2011. According to him, they set out to start Synergy with the clear intent of being co-creators and co-journey partners with the insurance world. A decade ago, the day they started the company their idea was to help the insurance companies travel their digital ambition plan and at the same time embark on new aspects of service creation and provide new products to the customers. Pradeep said that after a decade they had been quite successful in that objective. As of today, they are a company to have completed 150 plus engagements with insurance companies across Asia and are proud to be associated with tier one and tier two players.

Addressing the Coronavirus pandemic, he said, “They always say adversity will create an opportunity and truly so, for the insurance sector, there have been a lot of positives that have come out because of the pandemic. I would point three elements, first is awareness around health protection amongst the consumers and the bigger population, especially in the developing countries which are still seeing very low penetration specific to these products, there has been a big uptake on the health insurance side. Today, we see probably every one of us is thinking about whether I’m covered for Covid, what kind of covers do I have, is my family protected, and so on? I think that’s one clear aspect that people are aware of protection needs.”

“Second, the regulators are very engaged today when compared to before the pandemic situation, they are working closely with the insurance companies, ensuring that standard products are coming out, and all the insurance companies are giving standard offers. India is a classic example, in a way IRDA promoted Corona Kawach and Corona Rakshak products early on. So, I think that’s a big positive, the regulators are heavily involved,” added Pradeep.

Elaborating on the third element, he said, “The third element is more internal to the insurance companies where any transformation takes a lot of time and unfortunately or fortunately due to Covid, that transformation window has drastically reduced. So, digital ambition has been fast-tracked by at least two to three years. I think these are the real clear positives.”

Pradeep explained the Insurance Digital 3.0 vision, “Until now, insurers were always looking at the primary data which used to come from the consumers, the customers but in 3.0 it’s about how connected devices and big data is gonna play a key role in not just providing services but also in creating products and probably assessing the risk at a better scale and probably rollout in better offers to the customers.”

Sharing how they customise a solution for each client, he said, “Every insurance company, their processes, distribution mandate and partner ecosystem are different. The moment we go to a tier-one company, they are quite complex, just given the size. And what we do is, see which element works well for whom and then we try and match those elements. We also need to work at the pace at which an insurance company can absorb the change and we base it differently based on the client. Many times, we’ve seen our customers come back and say you guys are really fast, can you slow down a bit? Yes. Why not, we’ll go at your pace. But on the other side, we also see the young customers, the young insurance could not have a strong legacy, they come back and say I need to go digital in the next three months, can you help us in that journey? So, approaches are different.”

Sharing his view on how the insurance industry will grow in the coming years, Pradeep said, “Certainly the recent budget is fantastic. I think most of the insurance companies would be happy about what’s come out, especially with the FDI being relaxed to 74%, it’s a big boost for the Indian insurance sector. What we can see from here is that there will be a lot more investments, especially for covering the risks which are not even thought about. I think that’s the key element where the risks cover elements are going to be brought.”

“The second element would be, it’s all about the ecosystem now. It’s no longer an insurance company working in isolation, they need to work with partners and the partner ecosystem is evolving. It could be as simple as digital players, technology players who come and offer new technology, it could be a distribution area where insurers will try to strike deals with the e-commerce players. And on the product side, it will not be the insurance companies who may create a product, it will certainly be the insured tech players who will be playing a bigger role here and overall, given the lower penetration rates that we see in India which is just about 3%. It’s a long way to go and it’s very promising for the insurance sector certainly,” concluded Pradeep.

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