Bimaplan is an insurtech startup helping drive insurance adoption through technology. India has a low insurance penetration, and the low/middle income population is underserved by legacy insurers and distributors. Bimaplan’s full-stack embedded insurance platform enables businesses to seamlessly distribute relevant insurance products to their customers. Bimaplan is recognized by the Center for Financial Inclusion as one of the emerging global insurtech startups driving financial inclusion. Startup Reporter recently conducted an interview with Mr. Yogesh Gupta, Chief Business Officer, Bimaplan
Talk about some recent developments in the company and your current role at Bimaplan
We establish our partnership by providing curated products through strong tech integrations using our embedded insurance platform, UNO to enable the insurance distribution at partner’s end. The focus of my role in the coming year is to provide insurance to at least 2.5 million customers. We have more than 15 underwriting partners and we together tailor the existing products and co-create combinations of them such as health insurance with personal accident cover, or daily hospital cash to make it effective for end consumers.
Target Audience & Industries that Bimaplan caters to
Since we are a b2b2c startup, we focus on partnering with institutions like MFIs, digital lending institutions, small finance banks, cooperative societies and rural banks. We aim at providing financial security to the missing middle through our partners and support them with our tech enabled services & embedded platform.
How Bimaplan is enabling microinsurance integration for MFIs
Taking into account MFIs overall goals and depending on the bandwidth and capacity of their tech teams, businesses can choose from different solutions to integrate insurance. We provide various solutions such as API integration, SFTP, partner portal to enable insurance distribution and make relevant products accessible to the end consumers. This helps in reducing the high operational cost which would have come with the manpower involved, making it a win-win situation for both the companies.
What are your views on the Govt’s plan on replication of microfinance model in the Insurance industry?
Due to low market penetration (4.2% as of 2021), the government has introduced notable schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana. The success of these schemes will depend on a number of factors, including the product design, ease of underwriting, distribution, raising awareness, easy premium payment, simple claims processing and knowledge of and use of new age technologies. With the ongoing three month campaign running from April 1 to June 30, 2023, that will cover all districts in the country will clearly increase awareness & penetration at the rural level. The aim is to maximize coverage of various groups, including Self-Help Group (SHG) members, Anganwadi workers, health workers, sanitary workers, mine workers, unorganized laborers, street vendors, staff workers in urban local bodies, MNREGA workers, and PM Kisan beneficiaries under the two micro-insurance schemes.
What do you think about why Insurers are more keen on tie-ups with MFIs.
There are multiple reasons such as goals set by IRDAI chairman in terms of penetration and hence MFIs are more pertinent. So, until you have the right access to the rural customer and tier 3, 4 & 5 cities which are not currently covered, the cost of providing insurance becomes high. Hence, on having partners like microfinance institutions we can have access to the customers & provide them relevant insurance plans. Also the business model has to be sustainable in terms of policy renewals as it is the most crucial part, because if the policy is not renewed on time, then customers will have to again start from ground zero and get no long term benefits such as PED, critical illness cover etc
How MFIs and insurtechs together are making their way to the rural areas of the country
We work on 3 A’s model – awareness, accessibility, affordability. Since we are able to curate relevant insurance plans at affordable pricing, our products go hand in hand with the MFI consumer segment. Even in the future, we will provide insurance to the last mile by using intermediaries who have access. Hence, to scale up the business it is very important to penetrate the right product in the right market.
What role does technology play in your sector & the practices that you are planning to adopt in the future
Before we started our operations, we did a lot of research to find out the key to increase insurance penetration as there are more than 50K ultra small, small or medium institutions with limited tech capability. Together they contribute a good quantum of business so we decided to enable insurance distribution by providing technology solutions. Since insurance is not their core product, they would not want to invest in setting up a new operations stream and our t ech and embedded solutions let’s them offer insurance to their customers without bearing high operating cost.
Being an experienced leader from the Insurance industry, what are the current opportunities you see & upcoming trends in your sector
Our current aim is to co-curating and implementing tailored plans along with microfinance institutions as their target audience is one of our key segments as well. Another focus area currently is small finance banks, cooperative societies and FinTechs. These institutions are giving insurances as an on add on product which will cross market both the companies in the same target market.
What reach does Bimaplan have in terms of users/downloads? Also, what are the future plans?
In less than a year of operations, we have acquired over 300k users and onboarded 15+ partners and we have a projection to reach over 10 million users by the end of FY 2025.