New-age life insurers tap group business opportunity in their first year of ops

Time of India

03-06-2025

New-age life insurers
Acko, Go Digit and CreditAccess, all of whom received life insurance licences in 2023, are betting on group products to drive premium collection and the business.
According to data from industry body Life Insurance Council,
Acko Life Insurance
's premium collection almost doubled to Rs 63 crore in fiscal 2025, compared with Rs 36 crore in FY24.
Go Digit Life
recorded Rs 1,068 crore in FY2025 compared with Rs 426 crore a year back. Credit Access Life Insurance recorded Rs 193 crore in insurance premium compared with Rs 97 crore the previous year.
This was the first full year of operations for these new-generation life insurance companies. Both Acko and Go Digit had the general insurance licence prior to that. While Go Digit is a publicly listed company now, Acko is privately held and was last valued at $1.4 billion in a funding round in 2023.
'Most of these new-generation companies have sold group life covers in their first financial year, which has helped them to bulk up premium collection quickly. It also helps set the internal and sales processes quickly,' a senior executive at an insurtech startup said on the condition of anonymity.
Under group products, life insurance companies typically sell employer-employee life covers and also club insurance covers to credit customers.
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'Our initial focus was on group products, leveraging the quicker setup of servicing and sales infrastructure. Today, we have a balanced mix of both group and retail products, with plans to expand both segments equally,' Go Digit Life Insurance chief executive officer Sabyasachi Sarkar said.
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Go Digit Life has four retail products and three group products and is hoping to scale up both businesses in the coming quarters, Sarkar added.
The new-generation insurance companies had adopted a retail-first approach for their general insurance business. Both Go Digit and Acko had focused on retail automobile insurance as the key product to scale up their business, but for life business they have gone the group business route.
The industry executive cited earlier in the story pointed out that for the life insurance play, it is always easier to disrupt the group market because most of the business there is pricing driven and also is up for renewal every year.
'For products like life, customer trust is the key, building that takes time, hence one way of getting into the market is through employer-employee products where consumers will get to know the brand, experience the claims settlement process and eventually start trusting the brand,' the executive said.
In general insurance, these startups had disrupted the business with strong use of technology and also by adding direct sales as a large part of their business, without depending fully on agents and broker networks.
'Employer-employee products are a focus area for us. Digit Life in its first full year of operations (FY25) has clocked over Rs 1,300 crore gross written premium,' Sarkar of Go Digit told ET.
But these brands are likely to face much bigger challenges in the life business, according to industry insiders.
'I think new-age life insurance companies will need to invest heavily in customer experience, ensure smooth claim settlement processes to give confidence to customers and also work very closely with the regulator,' said Vivek Ramji Iyer, partner in charge of financial services at Grant Thornton Bharat.
To quickly build trust during the purchase process, startups can invest in creating a claims settlement simulation process, Iyer said. 'They should also target rural areas to increase penetration of insurance cover, for that they can look to partner with common service centres in rural India.'