The company’s deployment of cutting-edge technologies has been a key differentiator enabling it to stay ahead of the curve and create long term value for customers and partners.
Sanjay Pore, Chief Digitisation Officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company
Simplification sits at the heart of ICICI Pru Life’s digital strategy, following which the company has launched the buying and claims settlement process that is simple to use for the customers. As a consequence, the company has registered robust growth in digital adoption and honouring claims settlement.
Some of the other digital initiatives implemented by the company include targeting optimal operations efficiency, unified communication and unified doc store. In conversation with FE CIO, Sanjay Pore, Chief Digitisation Officer (CDO), ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, throws more light on the company’s digital strategy.
Edited Excerpts
What’s your digital strategy for ICICI Prudential Life Insurance?
At ICICI Prudential Life Insurance we have been leveraging technology to deliver an enhanced experience to our customers. We believe simplification is the biggest innovation in the life insurance industry. We have therefore, simplified the buying process and ensured a hassle-free claims settlement process. Besides augmenting the mobile app, the company has implemented the unified communication platform and a unified doc store.
Our digital strategy is centred around being the most customer and distributor friendly company by delivering simplified, seamless journeys across multiple platforms. By harnessing the power of advanced analytics and integrated ecosystems, we are enhancing every touchpoint of the customer’s experience.
The technology architecture is based on the “First Time Right” and “Shift Left” strategies. Using advanced analytics and integrated ecosystems, pre-populating customer information has enabled us to simplify the buying process for customers besides managing real-time KYC authentication.
Real-time new purchase application tracking and proactive communication during the buying journey have significantly accelerated policy issuance and enhanced customer satisfaction.
What were the most impactful digital initiatives in H1 2025-26. How did these initiatives contribute to measurable outcomes such as improved persistency ratios, faster claim settlement, or reduced cost-to-premium ratios and operational efficiency?
The deployment of cutting-edge technologies has been a key differentiator enabling us to stay ahead of the curve and create long term value for our customers and partners.
Today, approximately 98% of our new business applications are processed digitally, about 50% of our savings policies are issued on the same day and nearly 55% of our customers are onboarded using digital KYC. These capabilities have improved operational efficiencies and strengthened sales management.
The company provides quick claim assistance through the digital claim registration process, real time tracking through our Chatbot LiGo, WhatsApp and AI-based pre-claim assessment and claim processing solutions.
Our endeavour to continually improve the claim settlement process has enabled us to have an industry leading claim settlement ratio of 99.3% in H1-FY2026, with an average claim settlement turnaround time of 1.1 days for non-investigated claims.
This year, we significantly enhanced our mobile app to provide convenience to our customers. It enables them to conduct Existence Verification Check, Surrender Reinstatement, Annuity Certificate, TDS Certificate and Address Update through Aadhaar Authentication. Besides, customers can also check their policy status, track performance, download statements, pay premiums, and conduct digital life verification.
In Q2-FY2026, we have seen 16.2 million digital service interactions and 96.7% of the service interactions were done through self-help or digital modes. We have witnessed over 4.3 million cumulative app downloads.
A Unified Doc Store, a centralised repository for all documents across applications within the organisation has been implemented. This coupled with the OCR solution enables analytical operations, data verification thus helping in improving the operation efficiency.
The key benefits of Unified Doc Store include automatic document detection and filing in respective cabinets, reusability of data extract and enhanced image quality, faster, more accurate retrieval across all the documents, centralised permissions, auditing, and retention controls among other benefits.
We have also established a Unified Communication mechanism by bringing all communication channels like Email, SMS & WhatsApp into one seamless platform. It supports real-time, asynchronous communication, enabling consistent, streamlined workflows across the organisation.
The key benefits of having a Unified Communication mechanism include streamlined communication by autoscaling basis volume with parallel processing queues, real time communication via preferred mode of communication, consistent service quality by data and campaign governance, etc.
What was the composition of the team driving these initiatives — in-house IT, cross-functional business units, external consultants?
Life insurance companies rely on stable, secure, and highly integrated IT systems because policies are long-term, data-heavy, and highly regulated. Therefore, IT teams are structured to support core insurance operations such as policy issuance, underwriting, claims, customer service, actuarial systems, and digital channels.
There are various sub-functions under information technology which include core policy admin applications team, claims management system team, partner integration team, customer onboarding and digitalisation team, data analytics and actuarial technology team, IT infrastructure and operations team, data governance and information security team, IT architecture team, network management team, etc.
We have a hybrid model where both in-house and external consultants are deployed based on their area of expertise.
Which role was played by the technology vendors or partners in the digitisation exercises. What criteria guided the choice ?
Our technology partner providers play a crucial role in bolstering our IT ecosystem. They support core insurance operations, cybersecurity, IT infrastructure management, cloud hosting, data analytics, digital transformation and integration with digital public infrastructure. With proper governance and risk management, these partnerships have enabled us to stay competitive, compliant and technologically advanced.
Partners are shortlisted based on multiple parameters. These include partners who provide secure, reliable, compliant and future ready solutions backed by long-term stability, deep industry understanding and commitment. Few key criteria that insurers can use to select a partner include their security systems, domain expertise and industry fit, regulatory and compliance alignment, proven reliability and business continuity, integration capability and open architecture to name a few.
What are the key digital priorities for FY2025-26?
The key digital priorities are leveraging AI at scale across underwriting, claims, operations, 360-degree customer data platform modernisation along with cybersecurity and regulatory modernisation.
These ongoing initiatives are in line with our customer-first philosophy and will enable a digital-first experience for our customers and agents.
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