OREANDA-NEWS. November 11, 2011. Tata AIG General Insurance (Tata AIG) added to its long list of awards won this year by winning the E-Commerce Award instituted by Asia Insurance Technology Awards 2011 in a glittering ceremony held at The Imperial Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, on November 9, 2011. The award reinforces Tata AIG’s leadership position in travel insurance and innovation skills by recognising its unique online travel insurance offering to customers.

The leisure traveller in India for outbound international travel is becoming increasingly independent in his / her decision-making due to online ticketing platforms that offer him / her the option of choosing their airline and flight without any influence from the travel agent. Concomitant to this increase in online travel usage, it was felt that offering an online travel insurance purchase and service platform would be highly appreciated by the customer.

Tata AIG started the online travel business in March 2010 and took the market leadership the organisation enjoyed in travel insurance to the online space. Tata AIG offered customers a highly attractive proposition of buying travel insurance online in just two minutes 24x7! It being straight-through processing; we eliminated the need for human interaction (unless desired by the users) and offered a wide range of online payment options – credit cards, debit cards and net banking. Once the payment is realised, the policy is instantaneously emailed to the customer. Emailing the policy to the customer virtually eliminates the possibility of their losing or misplacing the policy hardcopy.

The programme has seen rapid uptake (month-on-month accretion of 27 per cent). Not only that, the back-linking of our web platform with travel blogs and content providers has taken place without any significant push from our end. This has led to the creation of a large pool of interested prospects who have transacted or considered Tata AIG for their travel insurance needs.

To promote the platform further, we have invested in an internet advertising campaign that continues to run successfully. We have also supported this with a TV advertising campaign in 2011.