sourabh aggarwal ,1273652,f2,ques.39

The case discusses the various types of insurance products available in the Indian insurance market. It examines the need for insurers to develop innovative products. The significance of having a wide range of products has also been discussed.

Further, the case suggests ways of making insurance products flexible using riders, so that they suit the tastes and preferences of different sets of customers.

It used to be that managing the life cycle of an insurance product meant getting the policy issued, storing it in a dark closet and processing periodic premium checks until the term expired.Information technology (IT) has made the world a much more interactive and volatile place, though, and insurers are continuing to learn that managing a product for optimum profitability entails a continuous and quick analysis of large amounts of data, as well as the ability to respond in near real time to the messages that data is sending.Traditionally, insurance companies, whether they focus on life, health, or property and casualty, haven’t demonstrated a significant degree of creativity or originality in their product offerings, and have been relatively slow to respond to new market opportunities. To be sure, the industry as a whole has made some good progress in terms of managing existing products via tiering and segmentation, but at the moment it appears to be stuck in a late 20th century mindset that sorely underestimates the full value of both customers and market information.Customized, niche products in life, health and property are the next phase in insurance. Capitalizing on that trend will require dynamic product life cycle models designed to quickly take advantage of fluctuating market and customer demands, as well as information systems and data to help identify, predict and manage to those demands.hildren in a selected income bracket with parents of a certain age. Data from across the value chain – quickly located, collated and submitted for analytics – will be required to determine the viability of the market, the right price point and the timeframe for the offer. A central data repository for insurance products is a crucial component in a service-based insurance processing environment because it enables standardized product definitions and rules – as well as the availability of those rules for use with other core insurance system components. Internal operations ranging from risk and claims analysis to underwriting, product pricing, marketing, segmentation management and customer retention all can help squeeze significant value and business insight from the same centralized pool of information.2Having that information in a single repository – and available for analysis and distribution across the enterprise – permits an insurer to feed a multitude of processes in an integrated fashion. It also allows existing products to be shared and customized throughout the enterprise. A key strength of product life cycle management, in fact, is the capacity to enhance and adjust offerings that are already on hand, and then quickly reintroduce them to the market in new forms to serve different needs.Product life cycle management systems also must be multidimensional if carriers expect to be able to develop and deliver innovative products and coverages quickly. An integrated IT framework based on a central data repository and analytic engines must be set up to translate into useful