Taking insurance education to the masses
Insurance Institute of India (III) was established in 1955 as a federation of insurance institutes to provide education and training support to all stakeholders in the country and abroad in collaboration with College of Insurance (COI), the training arm of III, formed in 1966. We spoke to III’s Mr SN Satpathy about the critical role played by the institute in today’s highly disruptive environment.
By Jimmy John
COVID-19 resulted in many learnings for the insurance industry. III secretary general SN Satpathy said that the most significant learning was for the masses as many digitallychallenged people became techno savvy and digital disbelievers became aficionados of technology. “Educators need to communicate through the medium most preferred by the segments they cater to, and that was exactly what we did at the III and COI, by switching over to the digital ways of educating the insurance industry,” he said.
Digital study model here to stay
Mr Satpathy believes that the digital mode of education has already come to stay in the insurance industry, and insurance professionals have accepted the concept of learning using technology.
“Insurers who had started using AI and ML for gathering information, analysing data, predicting repair costs and improving chatbot responses are now using these technologies for the purposes of underwriting, customer service, claims, marketing and fraud detection,” he said. He believes that at the next level, large language models can recognise, generate, classify text and answer complex questions. “Training is all about empowering people to take optimal decisions in real life scenarios. Often such scenarios are unique, do not follow past patterns and require original thinking,” he said.
Promoting insurance education in the region
III moved its professional certification examinations from physical examination halls to online platforms using AIbased remote proctoring systems in multiple countries. Within three months of the lockdown, the III started trainings programmes in virtual classrooms.
“The pandemic helped many existing customers in more than 40 countries to connect with us and catch up on their learning needs, utilising the lockdown period efficiently, and that too in a costeffective manner,” said Mr Satpathy.
The COI regularly conducts training programmes on insurance verticals such as aviation, cattle, crop, engineering, fire, health, liability, life, marine cargo, marine hull, micro-insurance, motor, pensions, project and reinsurance.
It also teaches all the functional areas of insurance such as underwriting, marketing, regulations and compliance, bancassurance, risk management, product development and pricing, survey and loss assessment, claims processing, insurance accounting, designing reinsurance programs and fraud prevention.
The III will provide academic support to the National Health Authority by imparting training to all the state governments for enhancing their capabilities in dealing with the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana.
A promising sector for young people
Mr Satpathy said that as a knowledgeintensive sector, young entrants should understand how insurance mechanism works across timespans, faces dynamic socio-economic conditions and there could be multiple moving parts that need to be factored in.
“This place a heavy responsibility on new entrants into the insurance profession, to keep learning,” he said. He advises youngsters that the insurance sector has a promising future, and that it would be a good idea for them to stick on and to be proud of being in a profession that can make a change to the lives of peoples, the fortunes of corporates and the future of the country.
Changing with the times
Mr Sathpathy believes that every institution needs to keep up with changes in the market and this applies to the insurance industry too. “The insurance industry will continue to be knowledge based, and insurance education would continue to be important for them,” he said.
He feels that academic content and knowledge transfer mechanisms would require changes from time to time in the insurance context also; the nuances of applying time-honoured knowledge in new contexts would also need change; and the way knowledge is shared might also need changes.
“Academic institutions working in the insurance space also would need to change with the times, and those that do not change might face the risk of becoming irrelevant,” he said.