Saving insurance customers time and money

How has the insurance market in the UAE evolved since the outbreak of COVID-19?

Car insurance prices, particularly in Dubai but also generally across the UAE, have really fallen due to reduced overall driving and the resulting reduction in accidents, however the number of transactions have stayed strong as it’s a mandatory product and even if a car is parked it still carries risks like natural perils, fire and theft, which is why most consumers chose to maintain their motor insurance coverage. It’s a great time to save some money on auto insurance.

Generally, the interest and take-up of private health insurance and life insurance has increased considerably as the public becomes more concerned about their family’s wellbeing. That said, there has also been the cost pressure on companies, which is why some employers have been forced to cut benefits and downgrade plans in their employee benefits programmes.

Travel insurance business obviously took a bit of a nose dive during the lockdown period and while planes remained largely grounded, however we are starting to see a strong comeback as every UAE resident who intends to leave the country is expected to have travel insurance and it wasn’t quite a mandatory product to have pre-COVID.

How would you describe the philosophy behind InsuranceMarket.ae?

We are on a mission to save our clients’ time and money and we achieve this through our digitally accelerated insurance advisor model where one of our ‘personal shoppers’ quickly respond to your enquiries and help you choose and buy our exclusively negotiated deals from leading insurers in the UAE like AXA, RSA, Oman, QIC, Orient, Noor Takaful and many more in a matter of minutes.

As the largest retail insurance brokerage in the UAE with over 350 passionate employees and as a result of the efficiencies from our proprietary tech, we are able to offer by far the lowest prices on all our products without compromising on benefits or coverage, coupled with market-leading speed and quality of service and advice not only at the time of buying insurance but also crucially at the time of a claim.

If you read our 11,000+ Google reviews (where we are so proud of our 4.9/5 star rating) you will see that while a lot of our clients don’t only praise us for our deals and responsiveness at the time of buying insurance, a great number also commend us for our commitment to take extra special care of them at the time of a claim through our digitally accelerated fast-track claims process and world class claims mediation team.

How do you ensure you offer the best possible value to your customers?

First and foremost, we ensure our clients get the best deals through our commitment to providing a choice of options for any insurance requirement. Providing an easy-to-understand comparison of quotes with a dedicated advisor to help, guide and recommend is core to what we do. As we say, we shop around for the client so that they don’t have to. This is how we accomplish our mission to save our clients time and money whilst making sure they are protected and have peace of mind.

In addition to this, based on InsuranceMarket.ae’s considerable volumes and the portfolio growth that we are able to offer to our insurance company partners, we are able to negotiate exclusive deals for our customers and we are appreciated for our ability to offer market leading insurance deals coupled with our best price guarantee.

This is also made possible thanks to our continuous strategic investments in state-of-the-art tech, omnichannel marketing and most importantly our excellent team. All these elements have been working in harmony to create exponential efficiencies in the delivery of value to our customers.

What specialist insurance products does InsuranceMarket.ae offer?

Our commercial lines and employee benefits teams can tailor an insurance policy for almost any specialist insurance requirement, including but not limited to:

● Employee benefits programmes like group medical insurance and group life insurance

● Property, business interruption and machinery breakdown insurance

● Commercial vehicle fleet insurance

● Professional indemnity insurance and errors and omissions (E&O) insurance

● Public liability, general liability and product liability insurance

● Directors & Officers (D&O) liability insurance

● Marine cargo and hull insurance

● Cyber insurance

● Trade credit insurance

● Medical malpractice insurance

● Photographers insurance

● Event insurance (with the option to include cancelation cover)

● Jewellers block insurance

● Livestock insurance

● Keyman life insurance

● Job loss insurance (involuntary loss of employment)

● Drone insurance

What steps do you take to help customers choose the right level of protection with adequate cover?

For private individuals, our stance is to offer the most comprehensive coverage options for their requirement from our leading insurance carrier partners right at the outset, so that they can have the widest scope of coverage without compromising on price.

For businesses and organisations, we typically take stock of their existing coverage if any along with a risk assessment based on an understanding of how the business operates and the kind of exposures faced. Based on this we would be able to come back with detailed recommendations for mitigating all insurable risks.

For life insurance and financial planning, the confidential fact finding process is carried out with our world class Advisors is an important one. The goal is to try and get a sound understanding of the current financial position of the client along with a sense of their longer term goals and aspirations. Based on this we would recommend the best way to protect and ensure the success of our clients’ financial future.

How has COVID-19 affected your business?

Whilst we appreciate that there are concerns about demand-side and consumer confidence in the market, our digital positioning has meant that we saw a growth in transactions during the lockdown period and we have seen the trend continue since.

On the supply-side, our insurer partners have offered us all their support to allow us to continue to seamlessly deliver our services and as a result we are thankful to be able to carry out a record number of transactions since the movement restrictions intensified. That said, the reduction of pricing on auto insurance means that our unit economics have had to adapt, but we have quickly taken due measures to make sure we continue to build a sustainable business.

Work from home has also been going well, given that our operation has natively been cloud-based and digital-first in many core respects.

As a result, I’m pleased to report that we at AFIA Insurance Brokerage Services LLC, as the insurance brokerage firm behind InsuranceMarket.ae, have not changed our vision and strategy, and we are excited to be able to continue to invest in our growth and development as a market-leading insurance provider.

How are you planning to evolve and improve your business moving forward?

We intend to continue investing in our team, technology and marketing capabilities so that we can get better and better at saving our customers time and money on all types of insurance. InsuranceMarket.ae has been a growth company from the time we started and we intend to continue maintaining the same growth rates going forward. This will mean that we will exceed AED 1 billion in insurance premiums in the next couple of years.

We are also excited about some opportunities to export our value proposition to other geographies which we are considering actively through some compelling joint venture proposals that have come to us.

Finally, we are pleased to continue working with our strategic partners Creative Zone in building propositions for the SME sector as we also consider other similar ventures to add value not only to the insurance market but also the broader ecosystem.

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