Ms. Sonia Notani is a founder member at IndiaFirst Life. In over a decade at IndiaFirst Life, she has handled a well-rounded portfolio across functions and verticals. Currently, she spearheads the company’s Marketing, Products, Customer Experience, PR, Strategic Alliances, and Direct & Digital Sales functions. 

Ms. Sonia has made it into the world-renowned Fortune magazine’s “40 Under 40” 2019 listing, that acknowledges India's brightest business minds. She has also been named among the ‘Super 30’ – CMO Honor Roll by IAMAI and iProspect in 2019 in recognition of her contribution towards charting the course of IndiaFirst Life’s brand journey. ASSOCHAM, has recognised Sonia’s contributions to the Indian life insurance space, with the “Women Leader in Insurance – CSO” award. Ms. Sonia is an Economics graduate from the St. Xavier's College and holds an MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. She has also successfully completed the Leadership and Diversity for Innovation Program by Women’s World Banking and Wharton (University of Pennsylvania).

Q1.    In Marketing what kind of challenges you have faced in the last 4 months?

IndiaFirst Life is country’s youngest and fastest growing life-insurance company. With our #CustomerFirst approach we have been securing lives and creating value since 2009. 

Even with complete Work From Home (WFH) situation, we have been fully operational across electronic and digital channels. IndiaFirst Life continues to service its customers at over 90% efficiencies with minimum disruption. 

The robust Business Continuity Plan (BCP) helped the organisation to connect with both internal and external stakeholders. For ease and convenience, we launched Ghar Baithe Insurance an initiative for enabling our customers to purchase and activate their insurance plans from the comfort of their home. Through end-to-end digital processes and our multilingual website our sales teams and partners stayed connected with customers while ensuring low physical contact. We also have actively started outreach on social media and digital mediums to address customer queries in addition to sharing regular updates via e-mail and SMS to educate customers on available features and service options.

As a trusted brand, we have only become stronger and better for our customers by rapidly innovating and adapting to meet our commitments through all phases in life. 

Q2.    What are the challenges you anticipate for the next 8 months?

With social distancing being the new norm, there has been a paradigm shift in customer trends. In-person meetings and interaction have taken a hit. However, that shouldn’t stop anyone from securing the future for themselves and their loved ones. At IndiaFirst Life, we strongly believe that Life is full of certainties. Our easy to understand and competitively priced products are available through end-to-end digital processes on our multilingual website. Further, we have announced special and innovative products to offer benefits on diagnosis of Covid-19 apart from the regular life insurance payable in case of death related to Covid-19. As insurers, it is our responsibility to offer need-based products, which are available when the customers need them the most. Challenges are meant to be overcome, and we are adept at facing them head-on.

Q3. Do you think online sales will take over traditional sales in the next 3 years? If Yes, Why? If No, Why?

We do foresee certain developments in customer preference in terms of risk aversion, assurance and medium of purchase. Life Insurance provides for long term assurance of savings and also risk cover. To prepare and ensure certainties in every stage of life, we are actively connecting, engaging and proactively giving options to the customer to tide over these unprecedented times. Keeping customer relationships and trust intact, we will continue to engage with our customers while equipping and supporting our distribution channels to help the customers locally. 

Keeping pace with the evolving needs during the unprecedented environment, there is a whole spectrum of customers that is being serviced seamlessly by our team to provide last mile connect. While there is a segment that is equipped digitally through our website, we also have a large customer base who reach out to our distributors. While digital will continue to strengthen going forward, we do not see it taking over the traditional distribution channels, instead we see digitization supporting these channels. We believe our distributors have the deep reach and customer connect across India and we continue to support them in their endeavours remotely through digitized processes. 

Q4. Which are the new products you are launching in the next 3 to 6 months?

Adapting to the next normal given the Covid-19 scenario, we will launch products that will be relevant to the customers in present times. Currently, we are looking to enhance our protection portfolio and offer more living benefits to the customers. Continue to watch this space for more information. 

Q5. Which product/s do you think will do well in the next 2 years?

With the evolving new-normal, at IndiaFirst Life we help you secure certainties in life. Moving forward with this strategy, we will continue to provide services and offer products that will best fulfil our customers’ needs and provide protection and guaranteed assurance across every household in India. 

Q6. Have you launched any product looking at the present situation? if yes please explain.

IndiaFirst Life has a trusted team, which ensures best in class solutions and service for our customers. Through our strong commitment and excellent efforts of making ‘CustomerFirst’ a reality, our products suite consists of 35 need-based products that cater to diverse customer needs across 98% of pin codes in India.

As insurers, it is our responsibility to offer need-based products, thus we have announced schemes that offer benefits on diagnosis of Covid-19. Products likes these are available when the customers need them the most. In addition to this, our Ghar Baithe Insurance initiative an, complete digital provision enables our sales teams and partners to offer service with utmost safety. 

We take pride in our new-age intuitiveness that delivers value through state-of-the-art digitalization initiatives across the complete value chain. We want our customers to be rest assured that we are with them every step of the way. 

http://www.insurancealertss.com//Insurance/Service/Asia's%20Best%20and%20Emerging%20Insurance%20Company%20Awards%202020