보험업에서의 소비자 친화적 금융서비스 품질 평가:라이나생명 사례연구

Abstract

The life insurance market in Korea is growing every year and becoming more competitive. Consumers' financial needs are gradually changing and increasingly more consumers are demanding insurance products related to post-retirement and health care. Recently, efforts to legislate “The Financial Consumer Protection Act” have been made and the Financial Supervisory Service is putting emphasis on financial consumer protection. As a result, the insurance industry needs to focus on consumer protection and consumer centric management. This paper is a case study of Lina Life Insurance Company of Korea (hereafter “Lina”), a subsidiary of Cigna Global Health and Life Insurance Company. We focus on Lina's customer centricity management. To maintain contracts for the longer term, the satisfaction of policy holders and potential consumers are paramount for insurance companies. Researchers have studied the factors for consumer satisfaction in life insurance products. Based on the factors identified in previous literature, a few indicators have been developed. To review Lina's customer centricity, we use the most recent indicators developed by Kim and colleagues (2012). This is the indicators for insurance services quality and we choose this because it is developed from a financial consumer- protection and consumer friendly perspective. The indicators are provided throughout the purchase process: pre-trade, point of sale, and post-trade. Among life insurance companies in Korea, Lina first started direct marketing in 1995. It has more than 4,700 telemarketers and operates telemarketing center in 10 major cities in Korea.Lina's corporate mission states “to help the people we serve improve their health, well-being, and a sense of security.” Examples of Lina's customer centric management are as follows:First, Lina appoints a chief customer officer (CCO) and Customer Centricity Council within the company. Second, to prepare its employees to adopt a customer service mindset, it provides education, shares a “customer centricity golden rule” and encourages small group activities focusing on customer centricity. Third, for each value chain starting from product development, Lina makes an effort on customer centricity. Specifically, it develops and provides insurance product specializing in cancer for the elderly and further it tries to reduce incomplete sales of insurance products by monitoring telemarketer calls. Lina also adopts Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) to measure customer satisfaction and use it for customer centric management. Kim and colleagues’ (2012) indicators include consumer centric management philosophy which Lina meets by having both a CCO and Customer Centricity Council. Indicators also include whether the company has internal regulations relating to business ethics, CSR activities, customer support department and its operation, At the pre-trade stage, indicators include whether the company protects consumer in new product development, provides insurance information to consumers, has a financial education system, and an insurance screening process. At the point-of-sales stage, the indicator is whether the company has a persistent operation and development for sales processes. Post-trade indicators include whether the voice of consumers (“VOC”) system is established, whether they have efficient insurance reimbursement service and insurance policy contracts that are frequently renewed by its policy holders. Indicators, regardless of the purchase processes, include a number of violations and sanctions, ethical management, CEO's customer centricity mindset and relevant system and also internal/external evaluations. We conclude that Lina meets most of the indicators for insurance services quality. A few suggestions are as follows: First, considering that most of the policy holders are seniors, in addition to letter and fax, it may be worthwhile considering a visit by a salesperson for insurance reimbursement. Second, CSR activities need to be more specialized and focus on activities related to their business. For sustainable CSR, they also need to set up a separate system within the company that focuses on CSR strategy, evaluation and activities. Third, since they also have private health insurance products, Lina should also expand their services to cover total health care. For example, they can provide customers not only financial education but also health-related information. Health check-ups, diet consultation, physical exercise treatments can be also considered. Finally, eventhough Lina already provides financial fraud education programs to the seniors, since most of its policy holders are younger, they can also consider providing insurance consumer education to these segment of the population. For a more comprehensive and objective evaluation of service quality, comparison with other life insurance company is needed. Some of the indicators are not used since they require internal information that are unavailable. Also the indicators we used did not provide a threshold for each category which allows some bias by researchers. For future case studies, comparisons with other indicators may be needed.