Life and health insurance provider BSP Life now has its foot on the pedal of innovation targeted at creating new tailormade products and digital platforms to address affordability and accessibility.
The insurer had started work on this before COVID-19 with products targeted at new job entrants and those at the lower end of the market in terms.
It noted an increase in the number of people that took up those policies until that momentum stalled during the pandemic and people started migrating. BSP Life managing director Michael Nacola said the last few years, coming out of the pandemic, the company has had to also focus a “fair bit of our effort on some compliance requirements”.
“There was an international financial reporting standard that all insurance companies globally had to complete and have the financial statements for 2023 in the new standards. So this was a highly complex piece of work,” Mr Nacola said.
“We are very fortunate that we have a highly competent team internally at BSP Life, particularly in the actuarial space and we got some external expertise – took us two years in the making to be prepared for that transition.
“And we transitioned successfully at the beginning of this year.”
Mr Nacola said with that out of the way, they would resume their focus on their innovation initiatives.
“Now that we have crossed over successfully for both our health and life businesses, we will now put our foot on the pedal in terms of innovation.”
BSP Life is hopeful this year as the environment stabilises and people have a bit more disposable income, it will see the same increase in interest.
“Part of our internal mandate to our sales team is not just about selling the big values, so $15million in premium a year is about the volume.”
However, he said it was important to get more people into the net “so they get the taste of how insurance works, how it supports their families and they themselves can be advocates”.
“The more people we can bring into the net will spread the benefits of how life insurance works across the populace.
“But there’s a long way to go.
“It will require some product innovation. It will require some innovation with digital platforms.”
Mr Nacola said they would be carrying out preparatory work this year and would announce new products and new digital platforms specifically targeted at the lower end of the market, and accessibility
