Jiyo Healthy!

In my near three decades of insurance experience, I have come across insurance recognising emotion as business in two ways. I call them the wrong way and the right way. Wrong way is mentioned first ’cause, alas, this is more often the case. The emotion here – fear! Fear of the unknown, of the uncertain, of the fortuitous, of the ‘risk’. Most insurance positioning is in terms of ‘what would happen if a calamity befalls?’On the surface this looks a pretty natural positioning – Afterall, insurance is to indemnify for fortuitous losses.. And, one needs to appeal to the fear of fortuity…

The catch is – while it is apparently very natural to position fear of fortuity when talking insurance, it is highly unnatural for the normal human mind to envisage a calamity or a negative fortuity unless it is absolutely imminent and just around the corner.

Hence the attitude that is the pet peeve of the insurance industry – people know things can go wrong, but they believe it will happen only to their neighbours and not to themselves.

On one hand, insurance is for unknown uncertainties and not imminent and around the corner calamities. On the other hand, the normal human mind refuses to recognise uncertainties somewhere in the future, and does not, therefore, feel a sense of fear about them. Here lies the dicotomy.

So, clearly fear is NOT the key..

Then what is? Is LIC wrong in saying ‘Emotions are our business’?

The right way for insurance to recognise emotion as business is through what is probably the finest of all emotions – empathy.

Have you ever sat back to notice that empathy is a resonating emotion? How it creates strong and vibrant echoes?? When you empathise with a person, you actually kindle empathy in that person too.

You can’t scare a person into an insurance decision; you can empathise a person into it. Afterall, an insurance decision does not often stem from ‘what will happen to me if something goes wrong?’. It stems more from ‘what would happen to my dear ones if something goes wrong?’. The cornerstone, therefore, is empathy, not fear.

Just see the difference – ‘A calamity will befall you; and you will need me’ – Instilling fear. Isolating and distancing that person. As against this, ‘If a calamity befalls you, I will be there with you’. – Empathising, embracing, encompassing. Yes, it doesn’t work if it is just in words and slogans; it always works, if it is in true emotions.

I am proud to belong to Medimanage, whose mission statement starts with empathy, where, the entire value edifice is built on the foundation of empathy. When I say I am an empathetic organisation, most people receive it to mean that we are empathetic when a claim occurs, when a health service or product is necessitated and so on. Actually, truth is far from it,far larger and farther reaching. Empathy, for us, is not just at the time of something untoward but in everything we do – including in helping people buy. We understand the buyers’ paradigms and offer solutions there – from there, and forever thereafter, the underlying diffrentiator is empathy.

Like all emotions, it has to be experienced, can not be explained.. Like my colleague Sudhir says, when you greet someone ‘Goodmorning’, it is not the words ‘good’ and ‘morning’ that matter, but the spirit with which they are said…

Tags: ad, buyers' paradigms, claim, emotions, empathy, health, Insurance, LIC, Medimanage, mission, risk, solutions