Award Applications

HSBC Term Protector
HSBC Insurance (Asia) Limited
 
Company Vision
At HSBC Insurance (“HSBC”), we aim to take care of our customers’ protection, wealth, education, retirement and legacy planning needs, allowing them to go headstrong in fulfilling their hopes, dreams, and realise their ambitions. HSBC offers award winning products and services in life and general insurance to cover for the unexpected, supporting our customers and their loved ones when it matters most.

A NEW way to understand our customers in the digital space
According to a report by Swiss Re in 2015 , the per-capita protection gap for working person with dependents in Hong Kong amounts to over USD 280,000 and ranks 2nd in the region, showing a clear demand for solutions to address this protection need in Hong Kong.
Based on a proprietary study by HSBC, the lack of insurance coverage is more prominent in the young and mass segments than others, despite a wide overall protection gap in the market. Career and family are the core priorities upon entering the workforce, where life protection takes a backseat in relative. Another proprietary demographics study also identified that policy cost and time taken to enrol are the main enrolment barriers for the segment
To cater to these segments, HSBC has taken the lead to shift gears and focus on a “change-driven” model and provide relatable solutions in this stage of life transition for customers, to build a long-lasting and rewarding relationship with its customers.
HSBC went beyond traditional methods and approached the demographic study with digital analytics, resulting in two specific personas: namely the “Reluctant Single” and “Optimistic Newly Wed” (two segments) that embody the young and mass segments. These two personas represent an aggregate of online metadata that portray distinct behavioural specifics of each sub-segment, sharing similar web behaviour to form the basis of our engagement strategy. These customer insights served as the foundation in product design, and marketing decisions for the HSBC Term Protector (the product). This study also served as a best-practise case shared in local and regional industry forums attended by prominent industry members in 2016.

Engaging With Relevance
Marketing for the product leveraged HSBC’s trusted and well established brand in Hong Kong for life solutions catering to the two segments to drive potential customers to online platform. We sketched their customer journey to extract the positive and negative “Moments of Truth”, significant moments in a customer’s life that can be leveraged to offer insurance solutions. Coupled with insights gained from online metadata, marketing communication design (appendix 1) and touch points were targeted at these moments of truths to trigger uptake of HSBC Term Protector.
The moments of truth such as the start of a new family and birth of a child were used. They are common themes for target customers in the age range, based on an HSBC proprietary study. Thus, marketing communication in eDM, pop-ups, and web banners utilizes designs that depict imagery of children, marriage, and family, providing a trigger point that echoes the customers’ personal experiences to drive traffic to the landing page to complete the policy uptake journey. The campaign slogan “Now’s Good” reminds customers that despite other priorities, it is always a good time to seek protection for their loved ones, especially during these moments of transition in their lives.
Based on the segment’s online browsing behaviour including the time and collection of webpages they frequent, campaign promotion was featured both online across local news webpages, social platforms and discussion boards, Google’s search and display network, advertorials in publications, as well as internal channels such as in-branch promotion, and through customer facing eDM’s.

Protection Solution Designed With Relevance to the Customer: The HSBC Term Protector
Based on the expectations from our target segments, HSBC devised the HSBC Term Protector: a low-cost, pure protection term life insurance product that customers can apply online with ease.
The product targets the void in the market for pure protection life insurance that has been left open by traditional human agent sales channels focusing on products that combine protection with savings or investment solutions. According to a study, online penetration for life insurance in Hong Kong is as low as 1%, with an opportunity to increase to over 10% in near term based on other markets. However, the challenge lies in proactively driving traffic and educating the market.
With customer experience in mind, the product also possesses the best-in-market application process, taking less than 5 minutes. It consists of a simplified underwriting process that provides a near 85% acceptance rate with only 3 medical questions. To ensure convenience, customers are alerted to application status updates by SMS, matching their lifestyle needs and expectations.
The product is also extremely affordable for sums insured between HKD 250,000 and 5 million. Simply put, the monthly premium required is 20 – 30% lower than similar products in the market. To put things in perspective, customers under age 40 can enjoy HKD 2 million sum insured with a monthly premium equivalent to skipping one cup of coffee per week.

Positive Impact, Strong Results, and Customer Satisfaction
As a result of customer centric product design, customer journey, and marketing, the product experienced a steady uptrend in average customer satisfaction and advocacy since launch, reflecting positive remarks in voluntary testimonials. (appendix 2).
Positive response from customers translated to sales results for HSBC. Since product launch in October 2016, customer uptake of the product has been strong, showing positive reception by the market. Since the first month of launch, over 50% growth in sales was registered, equivalent to 3-4 times term life insurance online sales of a leading Chinese online insurer . Most importantly, the result not only set the benchmark for the industry but it also has reassured the market and HSBC as an insurer the potential of digital insurance offer in Hong Kong.

1. Swiss Re Asia-Pacific 2015 Mortality Protection Gap Report
2. http://e.pingan.com/pa18shoplife/details/xbds.jsp
For appendices, refer to powerpoint file