This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 30, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Etiqa Group is ahead of the curve in helping to achieve three priorities advocated by the central bank, according to Etiqa General Takaful Bhd chief executive officer Zaharudin Daud.

Etiqa has embarked on the journey to help protect people and businesses, conducting business to help alleviate the hardships of customers as well as placing the right people with the right competency within the group.

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Tan Sri Muhammad Ibrahim had in March raised three issues facing the takaful industry: the sustainability of growth momentum in the era of technology, the takaful proposition’s lack of visibility as well as the size of individual takaful operators that have yet to reach optimal level.

According to Muhammad, focusing on the three priorities will help the industry to realise its full potential.

“On the first part, the thinking is to actually improve the penetration in takaful,” Zaharudin told The Edge Financial Daily in an interview.

He noted that there are many Malaysians who remain uninsured due to the market segment that both insurance and takaful focused on, mainly the high net worth individuals. On this, Eitqa will be launching POS Malaysia Starter Kit under “Perlindungan Tenang”, an initiative that BNM introduced to reach out to the lower income earners, which will help Etiqa raise its penetration rate among the masses.

The POS Malaysia Starter kit will be distributed via Pos Malaysia and is affordable with a minimum premium of RM30 per year.

Zaharudin pointed out that Etiqa has already tapped into the mass market prior to “Perlindungan Tenang” with its existing products.

“We have our existing products – Mabrur, MH Insure and Hadiyyah, a new family takaful product, that are specifically designed for the masses or the bottom 40% of Malaysian households (B40),” he said.

Mabrur is a takaful saving and comprehensive protection plan that complements the preparation for Haji and Umrah.

The Etiqa group has also tapped into the global halal industry through its participation in the recent Malaysia International Halal Showcase (Mihas) 2018, promoting small medium enterprise (SME) business care, marine cargo and product liability.

“For a first start, we participated by having a booth in Mihas 2018 recently at Mitec (Malaysian International Trade and Exhibition Centre). We are one of two takaful operators only. In fact, Etiqa is the only one with a special booth during Mihas. That’s one of the things we did in response to the governor’s remarks,” he added.

As for the alleviation of hardship for customers, Zaharudin pointed that to Etiqa’s Smile app, which is a universal app to engage more effectively with customers. The universal app is expected to be launched by the end of this year or early next year.

“We are venturing into technology to make it easy for customers. That’s the concept. There is also the danger that when we do this, inevitably we created too many apps. For example, we have a special app for motor. When you click it, we will know where you are and trigger a notification to the toll truck to reach you based on your location.

“At the same time, we are also into medical insurance. There is a tendency that we will create a special app for medical insurance. For all intents and purposes, these two apps are meant for the same customer. We do not want your phone to be filled with Etiqa apps. With Smile app, we have all in one. It’s a single platform to engage customers effectively,” he added.

Etiqa is also exploring better partnership in digitalisation through the development of an API (application program interface) that will allow the sale of its products via other platforms.

“This API will allow us to park ourselves at different marketplace. Maybank2u is our biggest partner and Ringgitplus.com is also on board now,” he said, adding that the API will be launched in May this year.

He also pointed to the improvement in e-payment in Etiqa as seen by the 211% e-payment growth from 2015 to 2017 in terms of volume. The volume of payment made using cheques has also been reduced by 84% from 2015 to 2017.

Operational efficiency is also another area that Etiqa has improved upon especially when it comes to turnaround time for claims submission.

“We will go beyond what we normally do as an insurance company. Our relationship with customers go beyond our contractual terms. We want to pay claims. The message we have to the staff is that we are in the business of doing claims,” he said.

Etiqa’s instantaneous hospital benefits claims took about seven minutes on average while the shortest response time is in one minute, while instantaneous death claims took an average 30 minutes to respond while the shortest response time was about 15 minutes.

Zaharudin pointed to the operational efficiency of the group that focuses on making purchase, submitting claims or receiving payouts to be an experience that is both fast and easy.

On having the right people with the right competency, he said that Etiqa has organised a takaful executive development series 2018, which intends to equip the management team with adequate takaful knowledge and awareness on the takaful-related issues as well as to strengthen the takaful compliance culture in Etiqa.

“We have 40 staff with Islamic qualifications,” he said, noting that these qualifications are obtained from reputable institutions such as Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals and IBFIM.