Online insurance sellers expected to create up to 300,000 jobs in the next three years

• Shwetank Verma of Indian Insurtech Association highlighted that the online insurtech segment would create 1 lakh direct jobs by 2025.
• Shishir Mankad of Praxis Global Alliance expects that 2.5-3 lakh employment opportunities, both direct and indirect, would be created by insurtech industry by 2024.
• Auto, health and life are expected to continue to be a big chunk of online insurance sales in India.

Online insurance sellers in India are expected to create 250,000-300,000 jobs in the next three years as the insurtech sector is at the cusp of breakthrough growth.

Shishir Mankad, managing partner and head of financial services at Praxis Global Alliance, told Business Insider that this would include both direct and indirect employment opportunities across verticals — technology as well as functional roles in product design and analytics, customer journey design, automation as well as fulfillment roles in sales and distribution, claims processing and more.

The segment is expected to generate part-time earning opportunities for another 2-3 million people in the same time frame, Mankad added.

Meanwhile, Shwetank Verma, co-founder of Indian Insurtech Association and founder of investment firm Leo Capital, in an email interaction with Business Insider said that the online insurance sellers in India are expected to double their premium by 2025 and create over a lakh direct jobs.

“The insurance distribution in India has been changing in a very different way.

There was a time when distribution was largely a feet on street model. LIC [Life Insurance Corporation] alone has roughly 1.5 million agents and the rest of the industry put together nearly another 0.5 million. There are a similar number of executives working as employees in the industry. However, over the past 5 to 7 years attempts, have been made to create digital

distribution infrastructure. These efforts will increase in the next few years,” Sanjib Jha, chief executive of Coverfox said.

Indian online insurance players include initial public offering (IPO)-bound PolicyBazaar, Digit Insurance, BankBazaar, Coverfox and others. ACKO General Insurance is one of the startups that issues their own insurance policies instead of being a third-party seller.

Dexter Capital’s founder Devendra Agrawal, in an email interaction with Business Insider, noted that the Indian insurtech segment is a very large subsector of fintech and is largely dominated by traditional companies. There is very little innovation and user friendliness in the current offering, but there is scope for greater innovation as more startups emerge in the segment.

He added that the new insurtech segment is likely to focus on three things. First, new product launches. Second, a more user-friendly interface and processes. Third, newer models would be introduced when it comes to insurance selling.

Shwetank Verma of Indian Insurtech Association reflected a similar view, highlighting that there is a lot of scope for innovation in the insurtech sector and new categories like cyber insurance, parametric insurance — a non-traditional insurance product that offers pre-specified payouts based upon a trigger event — and would gain more traction this decade by 2030.

“Most of the insurtech action has been in terms of distribution of policies and a couple of insurers who are digital-first. While these categories will certainly see growth, our view is that the sector is at a tipping point. We expect to see a lot more action on other parts of the insurance value chain, be it underwriting or risk management or claims processing, or product design such as micro-insurance or embedded products,” Mankad of Praxis Global Alliance said.

Even as the Indian insurtech sector progresses, health, auto and life insurance will continue to be the major chunk of insurance sales both online and offline, as per industry experts.

SEE ALSO:
Google bans eight dangerous crypto apps – find out if you have them on your phone
India continues to lead in IPv6 expansion with a 61.23% adoption rate globally