Big C gets into retail insurance
BIG C SUPERCENTRE has become the latest player in retail assurance, offering life and non-life insurance products to mass-market customers as it aims to attract annual premiums of Bt1.23 billion by 2016.
Sarathip Satitsatian, vice president for business development, yesterday said the retail-assurance market was growing quickly, but there was ample room for further growth as more consumers realised the importance of insurance cover for life’s unexpected incidents.
Only 37 per cent of Thai citizens currently hold life-insurance policies, for example.
The modern retailer yesterday launched “Big C Care You” services by teaming up with three insurers – ACE INA Overseas Insurance, ACE Life Assurance and Thai Cardif Life Insurance – and a brokerage, Coronet Broker, to offer reasonable prices for insurance in a move to help the mass market, and especially Big C shoppers, to access policies.
Big C stores currently attract an average of more than 500,000 customers per day.
Varawan Vechasut, deputy secretary-general of the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC), said the growth rate of the insurance market in the past had been lower than the agency’s target because of the low penetration rate in upcountry provinces.
The country’s retail segment, which has a greater network than insurance companies themselves in the provinces, will therefore help accelerate the overall penetration rate, she said.
According to the OIC, the nationwide penetration rate for life insurance is 37 per cent, while the rate for non-life insurance products is 70 per cent.
General insurance, and especially cover for personal accidents, with lower premiums is the primary choice in the retail assurance market, she added.
Varawan said the retail assurance market might not grow as rapidly as bancassurance, but the channel had potential for expansion if retailers could customise lower-priced policies with easy terms and conditions.
Big C joins the current players in the retail assurance market, Tesco Insurance Broker and 7-Eleven.
The company will, however, act only as a distribution channel, and not as a broker like Tesco, because its own brokerage partner will customise policies for the hypermarket chain’s customers.
Big C will realise revenue from the marketing support provided to its three insurance-provider partners, said Sarathip.
The policies that will be offered to Big C customers cover both life and non-life, she added.
Big C operates 510 outlets, of which 118 are hypermarkets and the remainder mini-Big C branches.
The executive said the company would introduce Big C Care You in 50 hypermarket outlets by the end of the year, and expand coverage to 120 stores across the country by the middle of next year.
