What travel insurance products do you offer?
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Antony Jacob
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Apollo Munich has completed six years of operations and we believe that travel insurance is an important product in our portfolio. We keep adding benefits to our existing travel policy – Easy Travel which covers both overseas and domestic travel. For both domestic and international travel, we offer a range of plans based on the nature of travel, duration and destination. Customers have an option of choosing any variant depending on the requirements. We distribute these plans through our partners as well as on our website. For customers travelling abroad, we offer plans based on the countries they plan to visit. Also as the healthcare costs vary in each country, our Easy Travel plan provides people with the option to select travel insurance for either the Asia region – excluding Japan and Worldwide – excluding USA and Canada or Worldwide. In the domestic sphere, we offer various segment specific plans to suit travel insurance requirements.
What are the marketing strategies of the company?
We undertake regular and diversified marketing campaigns to promote travel insurance on the internet as well as through our partners. Both current and prospective customers are offered the option to buy a travel insurance on our 100 per cent secure online platform. Understanding the growing demand for travel insurance, we are planning to increase our focus on promoting the same in the days to come. We would work extensively to engage our customers to address their needs for travel insurance when required with the help of our partners and advisors.
What is the future potential of this market in India?
The Indian travel insurance market is pegged at around Rs 4,510 crore in 2013-14 and the industry is growing at the rate of 20-25 per cent annually. The penetration of travel insurance in the country is low, but given India’s huge population base with a growing segment of travellers, India could become one of the largest travel insurance markets worldwide in the next decade. We have witnessed an increase in the level of awareness of the importance of travel insurance amongst people in the last few years. Though there is a lot more to be done to increase penetration and acceptance, we must accept the fact that progress cannot happen overnight. It’s a matter of time before travel insurance penetration reaches the desired standards, as a large part of the success of this sector and its players hinge on the awareness levels of consumers. So a collective effort from all companies is necessary to take travel insurance to consumers and increase the travel insurance penetration among travellers.
