CIGNA Thailand is upbeat about its bright prospects, following the achievement of the sales growth of over 80 percent year-to-date. This is higher than planned target of the 40 percent annual growth targeted for Y2008-2010, owing to its continued successful implementation of the three-year business plan. As a result, its business partner number has significantly increased while call center seats jumped to 500 at present and is expected to further increase to between 800 seats to 1,000 seats by the end of next year. CIGNA is charging to be the market leader of affinity marketing of insurance services in Thailand within 3 years.
Mr. Gary Wayne Denson, Chief Executive Officer & Country Manager of CIGNA Insurance Public Company (CIPCL) and CIGNA International Marketing (Thailand) Limited (CIMT), affiliate of CIGNA Corporation and CIGNA International, said that during the first nine months of this year CIGNA Insurance Public Company Limited recorded insurance premiums of 214.2 million Baht, jumping 196 per cent from 72.35 million Baht over the same period last year, and surging 81.5 percent from 118 million Baht at the end of last year.
Mr. Denson said that one major contributor to the sales growth is the company’s successful implementation of the three-year business plan, which was announced late last year, and with the focus on differentiating our strategic initiatives to the market.
“Our business model is based on the affinity partnership. Therefore, the growth of our business partner number is very important to the growth of our business. It’s clear that one of our strategies for success is expanding the number of the business partners to as many as we can. We’re proud to say that our business partner number increased by triple from last year, most of which are the country’s leading financial institutions, plus major companies in the telecom, retail, automotive, and IT sectors,” he added.
He said that all the partners have entrusted CIGNA to provide the insurance products to their clients because of the company’s uniqueness in many areas, including its home-grown CVM strategy and legacy system called Customer Value Management (CVM), which enables the company to offer the right products and services to the right customers at the right time via the right channel. In addition, CIGNA has continued to introduce a wide array of the innovative Accidence and Health insurance products to the market. The company is the first insurance company in Thailand to introduce the Dental Protection Plan and the Vision Protection Plan. Moreover, CIGNA has continued to uplift its call center management and Telesales Representative performance to meet the international standard practices and also to comply with the OIC regulations. It has also continued developing multi -channels in order to effectively reach different customer segments. Furthermore, it has dedicatedly improved the excellence of its employees in all areas . All of these are part of its three-year business plan.
Mr. Denson said that CIGNA has strictly followed the strategies of its three-year business plan and achieved many successes this year. For an example, the company becomes the first and only insurance company in Thailand to secure the ISO 27001 certification of the Information Security Management System (ISMS).. This has boosted the level of trust and confidence in the company by its partners, who can be ensured that their customer lists entrusted to CIGNA are highly protected all the times.
Moreover, the deployment of the CVM enables CIGNA to identify the right customer target groups and also know which products in priority order to offer to specific customers. “For an example, if CIGNA has database of 100,000 customers, it does not have to randomly contact all of them as CIGNA can create a data model of 10,000 customers in order to analyze their profile and spending behaviors to find the actionable insight. Then we will apply the insight to the rest of database list. This enables the company to contact only those intending to buy to its products. The result is its ‘response rate to buy’ has kept increasing. It also means that the company’s Telesales Representatives do not have to make calls to all the customers while the customers will not have to pick up the irrelevant unsolicited calls. This practice is the trademark of CIGNA worldwide, including in Thailand, and it explains why CIGNA has earned enthusiastic response from the business partners.” Said Mr. Denson.
As the number of the company’s business partner has increased, the number of the customer lists entrusted to CIGNA has risen accordingly, prompting the company to increase its Telesales Representative number to serve its fast growing business. Currently CIGNA has two call center sites, one in its headquarters in Ploenchit and the other in CM Tower Building, Wong Wian Yai. Both venues feature combined 500 call center seats, an increase from 210 seats earlier this year. The company has a plan to increase the number of the seats to between 800 to 1,000 at the end of next year, in line with the growing business partner number.
CIGNA does not only increase the Telesales Representative number but also uplift its call center management and telesales practices to be complied with international standard and also in compliance with the OIC rules. For an example, they are required to have a license before they are permitted to solicit sales. It is mandatory that they have to make the Welcome Call or the calls to ask for customer’s confirmation of their agreement to buy the insurance plans within seven days after the customers agreed to buy the insurance plans. All of these reflect CIGNA’s strict compliance with all the relevant state regulations, regardless of the incurred additional cost from the practices.
“Due to our various achievements since early this year, CIGNA Thailand can beat the planned target of annual sales growth of 40 per cent for Y2008 -2010. This year we are on target to achieve 80 % sales growth. Moreover, we’re strongly confident that what we’re doing will definitely make us become the market leader of the Accident and Health insurance products and services provider through the telemarketing channel and alternative channels in Thailand within three years,” Mr.Denson concluded.
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