We are all living in the digital age and how! You can find everything online, whether it’s your groceries, your outfit of the day, or even your life partner. In the financial industry as well, everything from banking to investments have gone digital. So has insurance. Every leading insurance provider in the country today is serving its new and prospective customers online. Not just that, there are many online insurance aggregators operating in the market offering all the available information on different policies and plans of different insurers on a single platform.

No wonder, there has been a paradigm shift from the traditional method of depending on insurance agents to taking the digital route to buy insurance. The fact that there are many benefits of buying insurance online has also added momentum to this shift. Let's look at some of the benefits of online insurance over traditional insurance.

What are the benefits of buying insurance online?

Convenience:

Buying insurance online is a lot more convenient as it can be done any time any day from any corner of the world with just a click of the button. You don't need to visit any office or arrange any meeting. When buying insurance online, you are saving time, energy and money that you would have otherwise spent on travelling from one place to another meeting different insurers.

Instant policy:

One of the biggest benefits of buying insurance online is that you can be issued a policy instantly if all the paperwork is in place. Compared with the offline insurance purchase, which may involve multiple meetings with insurers/agents for sharing forms, discussing various plans and submission of final documents, etc., the entire process of online insurance involving the same steps can be completed within a span of a few minutes.

Lower Premiums:

When buying insurance online, the customer buys directly from the insurer, thereby leaving no space for distributor's margin or commissions. Also, the overhead costs of maintaining an online platform are much lower than that involved in offline infrastructure. These cost-savings translate into lower premiums for online customers.

Easy comparison of different products:

Online insurance portals make it extremely easy for customers to compare different types of plans and policies. For instance, if you are planning to buy a health plan, you can simply visit the official website of your chosen insurer and check all the different policies it offers along with their specific benefits and premium quotes in order to make a well-informed decision. You can also compare health policies of different insurers through online insurance aggregators to choose the best health plan for yourself. This kind of comparison, if had to be done offline, could have taken days if not weeks.

Choosing add-ons:

Buying insurance online makes it easy to choose relevant add-ons with your policy. Add-ons offer additional protection and benefits to policyholders by paying a little extra premium. When purchasing any kind of policy online, customers can always check the option to add any of the add-on covers offered by the insurer along with the price at which they are offered. After making a quick assessment of whether an add-on can prove to be useful and worth the money or not, it can be chosen to be added to the main policy.

Avoids mis-selling:

The offline method of buying insurance lacked transparency as prospective customers were dependent on a handful of people for all the relevant information. Rather than making a choice themselves, they were relying on a third person to decide on what's the policy best suited for them. This often led to mis-selling of insurance products. But that's not a concern in the case of online insurance. When purchasing a policy online, customers can check all the features, benefits and premium prices of different plans before finalising the product they want to buy, leaving no scope of mis-selling.

Reviews:

One of the benefits of online insurance is that customers can read reviews of different products and insurers before making their final decision. This kind of first-hand feedback is not available when you are buying insurance through the traditional route. Reading reviews and comments can give the kind of information you will not get on any other platform and help you make the right choice.

It is due to these advantages that the online insurance sector is growing in India at an enormous scale and is becoming the preferred route for customers to buy life, health, motor and other kinds of insurance policies.

Disclaimer: The above information is indicative in nature. For more details on the risk factor, terms and conditions, please refer to the Sales Brochure and Policy Wordings carefully before concluding a sale.