Policybazaar.ae, a leading online insurance aggregator, is thrilled to announce its exceptional achievement at the prestigious FiNext Awards held in Dubai on June 21st and 22nd, 2023. The company has been honored with the esteemed Excellence in Finance Companies award in the sub-categories of Insurance, solidifying its position as a trailblazer in the insurance industry.
The FiNext Awards, renowned for their recognition of excellence and innovation in finance, attracted top-tier companies and industry experts from around the world. Policybazaar.ae’s outstanding performance, dedication to customer-centricity, and innovative approach to insurance solutions have played a significant role in securing this prestigious recognition.
As a recipient of the Excellence in Finance Companies award in the sub-categories of Insurance, Policybazaar.ae has demonstrated its expertise in delivering cutting-edge insurance solutions that cater to the unique needs of individuals and businesses. The company’s commitment to transparency, convenience, and customer satisfaction has set it apart in the competitive insurance landscape.
“We are immensely proud and honored to receive the Excellence in Finance Companies award in the sub-categories of Insurance at the FiNext Awards,” said Neeraj Gupta, CEO of Policybazaar.ae. “This recognition is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our team, who are committed to empowering individuals and businesses with accessible and comprehensive insurance solutions.”
Policybazaar.ae’s online platform has revolutionized the way individuals and businesses search for and purchase insurance policies. By providing a user-friendly interface, an extensive range of insurance options, and personalized recommendations, Policybazaar.ae has simplified the insurance buying process and empowered customers to make informed decisions.
The company’s commitment to innovation has resulted in the development of cutting-edge tools and technologies that streamline insurance operations and improve the overall customer experience. Through its digital platform, Policybazaar.ae has enabled customers to compare policies, obtain quotes, and make secure transactions with ease.
Policybazaar.ae’s success in the sub-categories of Insurance at the FiNext Awards further solidifies its position as a leader in the insurance industry. The company’s continued dedication to delivering exceptional insurance solutions, prioritizing customer satisfaction, and leveraging technology to enhance accessibility and convenience has set new benchmarks in the finance sector.
About Policybazaar.ae:
Policybazaar UAE is a part of the PB Fintech Group which recently got listed on the Indian Stock exchanges in 2021. The PB Fintech group started the UAE vertical, in the last quarter of 2018. PB Fintech is a marquee player in the Indian insurance market, but, the UAE market was completely different. That meant a lot of groundwork to be done right from building operations, marketing, and product development- and now, 5 years later, we are 400 colleagues strong and proud parents of UAE’s most trusted insurance partner.
Policybazaar.ae is one of the leading choices in the region, and so far, 200K policies in the UAE have been bought from our portal. Policybazaar.ae started with a simple but bigger plan, a vision: To make the world a more insurance-intelligent place. And we are starting with UAE and the GCC region after India. But, what do we mean by insurance intelligence?
To answer that, we have to give you a quick tour of our beginnings. PB Fintech, our parent company has two primary offerings in the Indian market. Policybazaar.com and Paisabazaar.com Policybazaar.com is an insurance platform. We are a web aggregator and insurance marketplace. In fact, in 2020, we became India’s largest insurance marketplace, with a 94.3% market share. But, it didn’t start like that, it started very very small.
Our founders, Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal, in fact, come from very humble backgrounds where security is the first thing you seek. So, growing up, all our life decisions revolved around this security, in education, in career, in vehicles, in investments, you were encouraged to avoid risks.
You were told to build a safe future. But, strangely, insurance was not something our family or most Indian families were into. I have seen close relatives who failed to avail of good medical treatment because they couldn’t afford it. Life is unpredictable, people get into emergencies, accidents, bad spots, insurance helps you recover financially, but if only they had an insurance policy…and insurance isn’t expensive in India, but, it was still not pursued much.
The reasons were – lack of awareness, those who were aware found it very opaque, they were either not informed enough to make a good decision or the post-purchase experience, claim settlement was tricky. So, Yashish and Alok said, let’s make insurance transparent, let’s make insurance accessible. And that’s policybazaar for you! Whichever type of insurance you want to buy – life, term, health, whatever, all you have to do is tell us.
You’ll be able to compare all the options you have in insurance. You can compare the premium, benefits, exclusions, and everything on a single tab, and you can buy it with a simple click. 128 million people visited Policybazaar.com in 2021 alone, and over 59 million have registered for our insurance tank. But, it doesn’t end there, Policybazaar is your insurance intel for all things post-purchase too, from doubts to renewals to claims to just understanding insurance. But, insurance is just one way to secure yourself. Another is to have dependable credit info.
That’s where Paisabazaar.com began. We found a gap here too – asymmetrical information, most people not knowing the options they have when they are looking for loans or credit cards, and not being able to compare them a t a singular screen.
In 2014, we started our credit marketplace, which now commands 58% market share, 8 years later. In general, whether you look at lending products or insurance products, the space is cluttered with technical words, and jargon that makes it a space not many people would generally know of. This leads to inaccessibility, fear, and users getting overwhelmed.
Whether it was Policybazaar or Paisabazaar, we have aimed to simplify and unify financial tools. You shouldn’t have to go to multiple websites and put in a thousand clicks to get 1 insurance, right? Genesis of Policybazaar.ae For our UAE vertical, we have unified it further – bringing the powers of Policybazaar and Paisabazaar together for Policybazaar.ae So, Policybazaar.ae is insurance and credit together for UAE. If we look at how Policybazaar.ae is doing, we are following a similar upwards trend as our Indian counterpart. In FY 2020, we sold 9,500 insurance policies. In FY 2021, we sold 25,000, and in FY 22, it reached 72,000 One thing we pride ourselves upon is that 70% of our customers would renew their policies with us for the next annum, which is extraordinary retention. This has translated into business growth as well. PB UAE revenue for Fiscal 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 was ₹100 Million, ₹75.39 million, ₹49.17 million, and ₹5.68 million, respectively 1 out of every 40 cars in the UAE is insured on Policybazaar.ae. Not only that, 45% of our customers file their claims with us, instead of directly contacting the insurer, and that is primarily because our support doesn’t end at purchase. Our customer support team has a respond-within-120-seconds policy.
So, even if your insurer may not pick up the call right away, we’ll call you right off! Timeliness is a factor in insurance, and when it comes to issuing policies, we have a 2-hour response time. We are not just making people insurance-intelligent, we are making insurance instant too. But, why UAE? To answer that, let’s look at how UAE was before policybazaar.ae came into the picture. So that is before 2018. The Emirates had offline aggregators, and individual agents/brokers, and any time you wanted to purchase insurance, you would go to them. Now, they will recommend the products they benefitted from, there was no repository or directory for you to see all the policies out there. Around 2010, online aggregators come into the picture for the UAE region, also almost the same time they did in India. But, the way both of these markets advanced is very different. In the UAE and the GCC region, online aggregators continued to serve with the offline business model, meaning you reach out, give details, and they will send you a mail/a callback. There was no unanimous, transparent reporting. Also, the customer would have to wait. This is where Policybazaar.ae saw a huge gap we had the infrastructure and means to fill. And the more we examined the UAE market, we found out it’s not so different from India. Let’s look at the similarities. 1. Both the markets were agent driven, meaning heavily relying on insurance brokers and agents to at least learn more about the product. Things have changed for the Indian market faster in the last decade. The process has gone digital, and 10% of consumers now don’t deal with agents, end-to-end handled by portals like ours. But, it largely remains the same in the UAE, which is another opportunity to expand. 2. Another similarity was that India takes reviews and online reputation seriously, and UAE does too. Before the decision is made, consumers from these regions will Google you. So, what other buyers have to say is a really important factor for insurance sellers and insurance aggregators both. Lucky for us, we have over 9,500 customers who have rated Policybazaar.ae 4.7 stars out of 7. 3. Next, the population mix. UAE is diverse – people from all over the world call it home, but an interesting plus-point for us here is that 28 – 30% of UAE’s population comprises Indians, a market we already know, a market that already knows and trusts us well. 4. And this…the ultimate commonality to bind us all together – Insurance confuses. The population of UAE was at a greater disadvantage here because most people in the UAE aren’t from the UAE – 90% of the population is not from here. So, when you’re new to a place, the insurance technicalities are new too. The insurance back home might be very different from what you have to pick from. So, insurance overwhelmed most expats. The way legacy aggregators worked didn’t help either. The first thing we did was bring transparency. We use real-time calculators to help our consumers derive the premium, the sum assured, and check the inclusions-exclusions all within seconds. It’s an easy-to-use portal, with the most number of insurers lusted from the UAE.
Policybazaar.ae will not only give you the answers right away, but it also has multiple channels to help you in that process. Not just mail or call. You will find our live chat box ready to take all your questions. Do you want to speak to an agent? No problem. Give us a call 24×7. The agent assigned to your case will handle it throughout – meaning you don’t have to explain on repeat, quick settlements, and better customer experience. 5. Another key similarity? Everyone likes good service. UAE, India – everyone and our passion for insurance intelligence delivers on that. Of course, the similarities helped, but, the differences helped too.
1. Only 41% of India has health insurance or is covered under a health scheme, compare to UAE’s 90% or more. Health insurance is mandatory by law in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. This meant a bigger market size than in India. Plus, after the pandemic, people aren’t just settling for the basic plan. The per capita healthcare expenditure has shot up, and because there is a heavy inward migration in the UAE, the health insurance market is expected to grow by 2 times YOY.
2. Motor insurance is mandatory in India and the UAE both, a difference here is the premium size gets higher in the UAE because of more expensive vehicles, which also leads to more premium plans in insurance and revenue for sellers and aggregators alike.
3. Life insurance is a huge market in India and a small one in the UAE. Of course, 90% of the population here is ex-patriots, who naturally prefer to buy life insurance in their own countries. But, that is changing. Loads of life insurance products are being developed currently which keep expats in mind, international products that will help their families access claims with ease. This means new opportunities again.
4. The UAE market is more evolved in terms of the audience. A UAE consumer is actively looking out for insurance products. Health insurance, and motor insurance are compulsory, which means people are looking for it. So, the problem here isn’t the awareness stage, but the access stage. Can we access it easily? Most web aggregators hide the most crucial fields, and we don’t. This is again an opportunity.
5. A primary difference between the two insurance markets is digital adoption. Even when we look at our Indian rivals, we find that UI/UX front is at least a couple of years ahead of the UAE rivals.
6. Digital First products, insurers are growingly understanding the purchase patterns of the digitally native users in UAE and are now working to build more new age and disruptive products that work well for them It is easy to buy insurance digitally because everyone’s competing to give you the best digital insurance experience.
This is also what gave us the edge in India, and Policybazaar remains number 1 there. We bring the same technical infrastructure to UAE insurance. A singular dashboard, a smooth flow right from buying to renewing to claiming. Everything is a simple click away.
Most insurance aggregators are stuck with legacy systems, policybazaar.ae already makes use of cloud and API technologies to ensure UAE gets digital. As of Oct, 22, we are the only web aggregator making use of cloud in the UAE. Our transparency and technical edge over our competitors allow us to also become the first choice for policymakers.
Policybazaar.ae is partners with 35 insurance providers and 15 top banks. Our network of top finance brands and time-tested relations is how we can offer UAE the cheapest premium rates and the most dependable customer experience simultaneously. In fact, our exclusive services aren’t just limited to insurance, we are the only credit aggregator with access to the credit bureau in UAE. It’s a huge market to serve, and we have some plans, we hope this is yet another step closer to an insurance-intelligent world.