The most successful online retailer in the world is to start sales in the largest market on the globe.
Amazon insurance policies, including life, health and general coverage, will soon be heading to India. The massive online marketplace plans to begin selling policies in this largest country in the world, by population.
The goal of the insurance policy sales is to boost Amazon’s Indian financial service portfolio.
The Amazon insurance policies will be sold as the company “aims to carry out the business of soliciting, procuring and servicing insurance as a corporate agent,” according to the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies. This was reported by BloombergQuint, which also stated that Amazon would begin by selling life insurance, health plans and general insurance policies.
The opportunity presented by India is a considerable one. The country is greatly uninsured. This means that, with the size of the Indian population, there is a tremendous, primarily untapped market. If done successfully, there is a massive insurance gap to be closed. At the moment, insurance penetration in India is only 3.42 percent. The global average is 6.2 percent – as of December 2017’s MoneyControl report. Clearly, India has a great amount of room for growth.
Underinsurance only expands the potential for Amazon insurance policies in the country.
Among those who have purchased insurance policies, many of them are not carrying adequate protection. That is, their coverage is not high enough to cover the potential costs they would experience if they face the covered peril.
The BloombergQuint report pointed to recent Assocham-APAS data, which suggests that by 2020, the insurance market in India will be worth 2020.
At the core of the insurance sales in India will be the use of Amazon Pay. That mobile payment service makes it possible for consumers to pay for goods and services on third party apps, websites and through its Alexa digital assistant. It uses payment methods the user has linked with his or her Amazon account. This mobile payment method would, therefore, be used to pay for premiums, as well.
That said, the BloombergQuint report pointed out that Amazon insurance policies won’t be able to sell until the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority provides its approval. That has yet to be secured as of the writing of this article.
