Insurer Viriyah plans mobile app next year
VIRIYAH INSURANCE, the market leader in motor insurance, plans to develop its first mobile application next year in the hope the mobile app will strengthen premiums for motor insurance and its claims service.
Sayom Rohitasathira, deputy managing director, said last week that the company might develop a mobile app on its own or find vendors to help develop the application.
Several insurance companies have their own mobile application to cater to customers in terms of providing information and a distribution channel.
Viriyah would go the same way as well and customers would see the Viriyah mobile app next year, he said. The company is currently giving importance to Viriyah Smart Claim (VSC) to improve the compensation process and VSC is a key strategy to sustain the renewal of premiums, he said.
Under VSC, Viriyah staff will arrive at the scene of the incident within 20 minutes and the fast claim process will help increase the confidence of customers and ensure renewals, he added.
After using VSC, the renewals so far have risen to 70 per cent from 62 per cent.
He said the company wants to maintain the figure amid the current economic situation. He said marketing campaigns might not be the best tool because the company does not want to get into a pricing war.
However, the company believes new-car sales in 2017 will turn to positive, as customers who bought a car under the previous government’s first-car scheme will become eligible to sell their cars to buy a new one. This would influence motor insurance premiums.
“We have to make sure that our claim system is good enough to accommodate clients. We will strongly promote VSC at all distribution channel and VSC might be one feature in the mobile app,” he said.
Another job for Viriya is to improve the loss ratio from motor insurance to 60 per cent from 62 per cent. Sayom expects the target to be realised next year.
He said the company has attempted to build premiums from fleet cars because the Asean Economic Community has brought a logistics opportunity to fleet cars, and the operators of fleet cars have installed GPS devices in their vehicles in |order to reduce losses from transportation.
Fleet car is an interesting market and Viriyah wants to increase premiums from this segment to 33 per cent from 25 per cent currently, he said.
“We will expand insurance to fleet cars in cooperation with banks and leasing companies that finance leasing to fleet-car operators,” he added.
Total company premiums in the first eight months reached Bt21.74 billion, up 1.2 per cent year on year. Motor insurance contributes Bt19.9 billion and the rest was non-motor insurance.
He added that motor insurance premiums this year should reach Bt31 billion to Bt32 billion against Bt30 billion last year, thanks to renewal premiums from existing customers.
