Disclaimer: This is a Paid post. 

When you enter a new business – especially a business which looks like a commodity business, you need to find out a niche. Or sometimes even create a niche.

As a customer how much time will you spend on buying car insurance? Well if you are lucky and have a car owned and maintained by your employer, nil. All you need to do is sign a form and you have no choice. However if you are a car owning individual, you will spend some time in researching what is available and how much it costs.

Am I right?

Well, I am not sure. Normally, people pick up a phone and ask a friend or a known one “tell me where did you buy your car insurance from…do you have an agent… can you ask him to come over”. Now if you are not too intrusive, and inquisitive, you will just ask him “how much” and sign the cheque – without ever knowing if you bought the right car insurance policy for yourself or not. However, if you are a person who takes interest in your health, wealth, protection, and want a simple DIY platform for your insurance needs, you will like the platform created by COCO by DHFL General Insurance.

COCO by DHFL General Insurance is aiming to pioneer the InsureTech space and is aiming to make the purchase of motor insurance easy. If you have bought anything from Indian BFSI companies, you will appreciate this attempt. Every purchase in India is painful. So imagine being able to select a plan and completing the whole purchase journey without any hassle! This is like you selecting your menu and deciding what to eat..and paying the bill for just that at the exit (instead of having to pay for a buffet from which you won’t have most of the dishes).  The word ‘COCO’ stands for “Connected Coverage” which emerges from DHFL General Insurance’s brand purpose of ‘Connectivity’ in a digital world, and ‘Coverage’ that is wholly based on their offering of insurance protection.

COCO by DHFL General insurance recently launched their new comprehensive car insurance policy called COCODrive. This new product is like a fresh breeze of ease in the complicated and drab insurance space in India. COCODrive is touted to be the first customizable A-La-Carte policy that allows hyper customization in a way that each customer’s policy is unique.

What I liked about COCODrive is that it is easy to buy – and it has a huge variety to choose from. It has a slew of 19 add-ons to choose from, which is the maximum in the market . I was  intrigued with the idea of providing a huge variety of choices. But the new-age millennial generation is spoilt for choices and likes to see so much of variety. Since the brand is primarily going after the young internet generation, it makes sense. However, the persons buying the real big insurance must be the parents of the millennial and they could seek the help of the millennial. At least my vacation planning and execution is done by my daughter who is born in this century! As per their research, they have arrived at conclusion that customization is the future of insurance and people want to have the power to purchase exactly what they want and pay for just that. While I am used to buying insurance in a bundled form traditionally – and would like to see some 4 or 5 pre-packaged insurance packages apart from from the elaborate list of add-ons, I am certain the younger generation is going to be excited about this.

Since they have standard and non-standard add-ons ranging from Zero Depreciation Cover to Key & Lock Replacement among many others, customers can now choose riders that are relevant to their individual motoring needs. The protection that COCODrive provides are for the car,  as well as for the driver. I am a huge proponent of term insurance, however not everybody buys adequate term cover. So if one of those insurance buyer chooses an accident rider of Rs. 35L , it might be just God sent for the family, in case of an accidental death.

Since COCO’s website uses underlying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies, I am sure that with passage of time and with more data collection they will be able to customize the website which will tell you “people in your area bought this too” and that kinda prompts. That will be useful because I do not consider myself an expert on general insurance and sometimes need guidance. Till now I have been dependent on the agent to tell me what to buy, and I did buy it without completely understanding. No I do not think that general insurance is as simple to understand as buying Term Life Insurance. While I like the idea of buying a motor insurance online in a simple way, I am still not sure if I am ready to buy a health/ medical insurance online just yet. I would prefer a well-meaning good agent to guide me for health insurance specifically. But I also understand that the younger generation is all in for buying everything online – from clothes to gadgets, from vehicles to insurance. COCO by DHFL General Insurance is empowering this generation and will hopefully change the way we all buy insurance.

COCO’s website: https://www.dhflinsurance.com

Disclaimer: Paid Post.