Aditya Birla Financial Services Group Puts “Health First” into Health Insurance

  • Last Updated On: December 11, 2019
  • 3 minute read

Aditya Birla Financial Services Group (ABFSG) today announced the launch of its standalone health insurance arm under the brand Aditya Birla Health Insurance (ABHICL). ABHICL is a joint venture between the Aditya Birla Group and MMI Holdings Ltd. (MMI), a large and diversified financial services leader in South Africa.

ABHICL enters the Indian health market with a differentiated business model when compared to that of any existing health insurance player, offering health insurance to a wider set of customers by driving awareness and changing existing consumer attitudes in health insurance.

ABHICL would serve as an enabler and influencer of health and healthcare choices that customers make, in addition to being a payer of healthcare expenses. Thus, ABHICL would act like a much-needed catalyst to grow the prevalent health insurance landscape in India through product innovations and a wider choice of consumer relevant products. ABHICL has connected solutions to the role a customer thinks health plays in their own life – be it as an enabler of good things or as a barrier to achieving life goals, empowering and motivating families to prioritise “Health First”, in keeping with ABHICL’s core business philosophy.

Customers will be able to select their own healthcare providers from an extensive network, manage health care expenses through informed choices and will be given ample opportunities to improve their overall health. While ABHICL will target an existing captive consumer base of several million ABFSG customers, it plans to grow rapidly given its product philosophy that expands health insurance to a newer category of fit and healthy customers. ABHICL will also introduce a chronic care management programme to cater to the unmet needs of a growing Indian population of those suffering from 5 chronic lifestyle conditions.

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Announcing the launch, Ajay Srinivasan, Chief Executive – Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group said, “We are very excited about the launch of ABHICL in partnership with MMI. In keeping with our vision of being a well-diversified financial services conglomerate that builds leadership through solving customer problems, ABHICL will seek to grow in a competitive market by making a positive impact on individuals and families. We are very bullish on this sector and our business model as health is a core necessity for the ambitious India.”

“Our partner brings a vast amount of knowledge and IP in this area which we think will be invaluable to our customers”, he further added

Nicolaas Kruger, Group CEO of MMI Holdings said, “We look forward to extending our health insurance solutions to the Indian market and are excited about the growth potential in India. We aim to continually work together with ABHICL, to better understand customer needs and enhance our product offerings in line with what they need the most at any given point of time in their life.”

Mayank Bathwal, CEO, Aditya Birla Health Insurance Co. Limited added “With the launch of ABHICL, we want to focus as much on ‘Health’ as on ‘Insurance’. Through our full range of retail and group health insurance offerings, we will look to expand the category as it will find relevance among a wider set of customers, including the young, health-conscious and others dealing with the most common chronic lifestyle diseases. We aim to enhance consumer convenience leveraging the power of digital.”

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ABHICL has invested considerable time and effort to understand existing correlations between good health and individual health choices. ABHICL’s product philosophy aims to combine the understanding of this science with an assessment of unaddressed needs of large customer segments, which presently remain unfulfilled. This philosophy can be summed up in 4 simple points –

  • Rewarding healthy behaviour with incentives that make efforts worthwhile
  • Safeguarding health by guiding customers to manage chronic lifestyle conditions better
  • Protecting health needs with dignity
  • Providing easy access to a holistic health and wellness ecosystem in a personalised, efficient and cost-effective manner through digitised processes

On the distribution front, ABHICL will have a multi-channel distribution model across agency, broking, bancassurance, direct marketing, online channel and more. The agency channel will start with 9 branches across top 7 tier-1 cities and will expand reach in the next couple of years.