'LIC's IT Vision Is Derived From Its Business Vision'

In a quick chat with Biztech2.com on the sidelines of IBM Software Universe 2009, B Venugopal, ED-IT/ SD, LIC, speaks about the Enterprise Document Management System rolled out at LIC, online portals and more importantly, the larger vision for IT determined by the business vision of LIC.

Can you throw some light on the integration between IT and business at LIC?

As far as LIC is concerned, the top management has been cohesively working with IT for decision-making. The vision for IT is derived from the business vision of LIC as an institution. We still have to tap a huge population in the country for life insurance. The processes involved in marketing the products to this huge untapped segment have to be driven by IT. Within many organisations, the role of IT may be that of a supporting function to the business; however, for us, it is a driver of marketing and customer service. Our IT function provided leads to the marketing department for one of the company’s most successful marketing campaigns – Jeevan Astha – last year.

Our data warehouse has helped us immensely in understanding the customer. The transaction gets reflected on the Data warehouse after getting registered in the parent system. It helps us to do data mining and analysis to understand the customer better, design bespoke products, run loyalty programs, launch targeted marketing campaigns, offer new products etc. So when we plan something, it is not only on the basis of what IT can do but what IT is required to do, because it has to meet the requirements of marketing, customer service and other departments. Thus, business and IT are completely aligned at LIC and this has helped in whatever we have achieved as yet.

How do LIC customers benefit from the Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS)?

LIC has close to 25 crore policy holders with about 500 mn transactions being registered annually. Moreover, we are also preparing ground to target the large amount of uninsured citizens in the country. For a long time, we had a complete networking of our branches enabling the customers to access most of our services from any branch. So, for example, the policy may be active in Mumbai but the customer can pay his premium from Kolkata also. For that matter, apart from accessing payment services, he could also get his account statement etc from all branches. However, for services like claiming insurance, getting statement of claims etc, the customer had to physically approach his branch with the policy document.

The cornerstone of our IT policy is to provide anytime, anywhere services to customers. The need to physically approach the branch for receiving payments, claim statements etc was a major drawback that we noticed. Thus, three years ago, we started working on the Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS). We had 20 crore documents to be processed when the project was initiated. These are now being digitised. The result – any LIC executive from any branch anywhere in the country can offer any given service to the customer. We are only three to four months away from completing the original target. The documents are of the current customers. For the new customers, we will have to adopt a different strategy. Apart from this, we have also deployed some workflow processes, which are enabled by the EDMS.

How are LIC’s online portals benefitting the customer?

As we only have 2,048 branches for 25 crore customers, the main idea is to offer a choice to the customer. If the customer wants to transact business with us beyond the office timings and from a location, where there is no physical office, we should be able to give him an option. For this purpose, we launched online portals about four years back.

The portal allows customers to pay their premium online, get print-outs of regular account statements etc at their convenience. The customer apart, market intermediaries including the insurance agents, are also able to leverage these portals.

In future, the customer will also be able to buy insurance policies online. The advantage is that without investing in setting up extra offices, we are able to use our existing infrastructure to connect with all those external entities, which have the capability to connect with us. They become a part of our extended branch offices.