Future Generali to offer telephonic premium payments

Mumbai: Future Generali, the insurance joint venture between India's Future Group and Generali of Italy, has adopted a IVR Tele-commerce solution, to enable its policy holders make premium or renewal payments by using a phone and their credit cards.

Future Generali says, with this adoption, it has become the the first insurance company in India to provide end-to-end life and non-life insurance premium and renewal payment option over the phones.

To facilitate this, Future Generali has tied up with  atom technologies, the digital, retail initiative of the Financial Technologies Group, that operates a number of commodities eschange patforms

''With a vast section of the Indian market still relatively uninsured and underinsured, Future Generali, as a total insurance solutions provider, envisages a huge potential for growth and is looking at technology as a key enabler in achieving its objectives.'' said Anup Seth, head, mallassurance channel, Future Generali India Insurance Co. Ltd.

He further added, ''With the increasing penetration of cell phones, mobile commerce is set to witness tremendous growth over the coming years. With our IVR service, our customers can now make their premium payments using their mobile phone''

To avail this service, a customer needs to dial in to a Future Generali call centre and speak to a customer service representative (CSR) for renewal of an existing policy or to buy a new policy. CSR's then initiate the three-way conference call between customer, atom and themselves, as the call is connected, the IVR prompts the customer to enter credit card details on the phone's key pad. The transaction is completed when the IVR reads out the successful authorisation.

''We are confident that our solutions will help insurance companies in serving their customers better and ease their premium collection process. It will also reduce their cost overheads as cost per transaction will come down for them.'' said Dewang Neralla, director, atom technologies.