In a bid to increase awareness about non-life insurance products, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) along with General Insurance Council (GICL) would be launching a consumer awareness advertising campaign. The pan-India advertisement campaign would be rolled out on television, radio and in print in 11 different languages in a month’s time.
The GICL is an association of 27 non-life insurance companies in the country.
The awareness campaign would focus on indemnity. It will tell people in case of a damage/loss, an insurance policy can help you to get back to the position before the loss.
This is the first time that IRDA and GICL are launching a co-ordinated pan-India campaign to create insurance awareness.
The advertisements would be in 11 languages (English, Hindi, Marathi, gujrati, Assamese, Oriya, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada).
The cost for the campaign will be around Rs 20 crores. And will be largely funded by IRDA.
The idea to launch a pan-India insurance campaign was first proposed in 2010 by the CII sub-group on health to IRDA.
The IRDA then sponsored a national survey consisting of 30,200 households in 29 states and union territories to gauge awareness, penetration and experience of insurance products in 2011. The study found that awareness for non-life (health) insurance is low with only 54% households having heard about it. A high proportion of households connected insurance with loss of life and were unaware about other types of insurance covers in the non-life insurance space. Television was the primary source of information for insurance for most of households, followed by radio among rural households and newspapers as the second source of information for urban households.
The study recommended that in terms of an immediate action plan, a consumer awareness advertising campaign needed to be rolled out at the earliest that would insure that the masses are made aware of the need and benefits of insurance.
The communication task for the campaign should be to create awareness and to provide ‘reason to buy’ general insurance personal line products across motor, property, health and rural segments. The creative thought for spreading awareness has been suggested as (kal aaj aur kal) – the remind button for an individual’s life styles as insurance which indemnifies one against adverse event.
The ‘reason to buy’ insurance for an individual has been emphasized by positioning as the solution and individual needs to adopt to have the capability to bounce back should an unforeseen event strike causing a financial loss.
Though the non-life insurance premium underwritten grew by 23% in FY’12 reaching Rs 53,000 crores from Rs 43,000 crores in FY’11, the growth of the industry has not led to an increase in insurance penetration (being defined as ratio of general insurance premium to national GDP).
When the insurance industry had opened up in 2001, the penetration level of insurance was at 2.71%. After ten years of opening up, the penetration levels of the insurance sector stands at 5.10%. Out of this, the life insurance sector has penetrated at a higher level then the non-life sector. The general insurance sector penetration level was 0.55 % in 2000, which has risen to 0.7% in 2011.
