The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health, humanitarian and financial crisis.
This is what Insular Life (InLife), a Filipino life insurer and winner of the 2020 Domestic Life Insurer – Philippines Award given by the Insurance Asia Awards, realized after assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the country. As a corporate citizen, InLife took steps to address this crisis in order to help Filipinos cope with one of the worst pandemics to ever happen in the country’s recent history.
InLife mobilized its employees, agents, and policyholders to gather donations, with its corporate social arm, the Insular Foundation, matching all cash donations gathered. The money collected was used to provide personal protective equipment (PPEs) for medical frontliners of nine hospitals, food packs for families in poor areas, kitchen equipment in temporary shelters, and financial assistance for nurses and medical staff. It also provided free life insurance cover and hospitalization benefits to both medical and non-medical frontliners through its Chain of Protection Program.
As the pandemic has threatened the lives of many, InLife assured its policyholders that individual life policies as well as policyholders of its Group Life policies, would be covered against COVID-19. Despite the exclusion of a pandemic in its group policies, InLife decided to cover COVID-19 cases. It also extended the grace period for premium payments to 91 days instead of the usual 30 days for individual policies due for payment from February 15 to May 31, 2020. This was meant to enable InLife policyholders to adjust to the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in effect at the time.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the extended quarantine period implemented in the country challenged the insurance business which was highly dependent on face-to-face transactions with its clients and prospects. Fortunately, for InLife, it had already established a strong digital capability for a seamless digital end-to-end onboarding for its customers and distribution channels alike. This has allowed InLife to continue to operate with minimal service interruptions and create new products and services even while the country was on ECQ.
In the midst of the pandemic, it was agile enough to successfully roll out its Virtual Business Enabler (ViBE), a multiplatform system that enabled its agency force to stay in touch with their clients, while meeting new ones without the need for face-to-face contact.
InLife’s Automated Underwriting System continues to provide fast and efficient system for policy application to policy issuance in as little as 30 minutes. The Customer Portal, meanwhile, provides comprehensive self-service capability that enables policyholders to pay premiums, redirect premium payments, switch and withdraw funds, take out policy loans or withdraw dividends for liquidity requirements. It also has a chat and email facility for faster communication with InLife’s customer service associates.
During this pandemic, the InLife Digital Store was also launched, while two new products were offered to the market: Prime Care, a yearly renewable plan that gives cash benefits in case of critical illness, and Total ProtectER, a plan with three benefits—one year term life insurance, daily hospital income, and a one-time use Emergency Health Care voucher.
Recently, it made available Ella, the InLife Chatbot on InLife’s Facebook Messenger account. Ella gives answers right away to customers who want to know how to use the Customer Portal and guides them as they perform transactions in the customer portal such as fund withdrawals and policy loan applications on their own.
As one of the rare Filipino companies making it to 110 years, InLife has the unique responsibility and special accountability to the country. InLife has navigated through countless challenges but flourished as it continued to adapt well to the times. Guided by the values that helped it during these periods of calm and turbulence, InLife promises to continue creating a lifetime for good for everyone, proving its worth to be called Insurance Asia Awards’ Domestic Life Insurer of the Year – Philippines for four consecutive years.
Insurance Asia Awards presented the Award to InLife via its first digital awards presentation. IAA cited InLife – along with 75 other insurers across Asia – for its conscious effort to put solutions and deliver exceptional value to its stakeholders. IAA noted that InLife improved its financial performance, created a lifetime for good for its stakeholders by transforming its systems and processes digitally, and blazed the path towards women empowerment.