MetLife places priority on 'bridging the gap'

Sanjeev Kapur, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of MetLife Asia, speaks during an interview at The Korea Times newsroom in Seoul, April 16. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

360 Health launched to provide holistic solution in Asia

By Kim Bo-eun

MetLife, a global insurance giant, is a mid-tier player in the Korean insurance market, but it does not care too much about enlarging its size to become a major player here.

The insurer instead focuses more on enhancing a value proposition as it sees a significant opportunity to increase market share by “bridging the gap” between the values insurers are providing and customers' needs.

"Most insurance companies are positioned around products that they give to customers. We are trying to provide holistic solutions ― services that meet the health, familial and future needs of customers," Sanjeev Kapur, senior vice president and chief marketing officer (CMO) of MetLife Asia, said in an interview on April 16.

"If we are obsessive about customer needs and gaps in the market we will be able to disproportionately gain share _ there is enough growth we can get in the market by doing that really well," he said.

The holistic solution is 360 Health, a new policy helping customers to prevent illnesses, and get access to treatment, ongoing care and financial support for them. MetLife has launched the policy and sub-brand in Korea and China. It is the only solution in Asia that provides end-to-end support across all life stages of a serious illness, according to the insurer.

The decision to launch 360 Health in Asia was based on a prior survey that showed 71 percent of customers in Asia are more concerned about their quality of life than how long they live. The tendency was the most pronounced in Korea, at 83 percent.

Korea is one of the fastest aging societies, which comes with the incidence of serious illnesses, but data shows out of pocket health expenditures of Koreans are among the highest in Asia. Despite its advanced national healthcare system, Korea has one of the highest annual average growth rates in per capita expenditure, according to data from the OECD.

"Other companies tend to be focused on protecting customers when they get into an adverse health situation such as cancer or an accident. There is an opportunity to play a more meaningful role in customers' life if we can prevent that adversity from happening," the Singapore-based CMO said.

MetLife's aim to bridge gaps can also be understood in the sense of bringing down the gap between health span and life span.

"The longevity of the average health span is around 10 years less than the lifespan, which is pretty stark," Kapur said.

Metlife's 360 Health aims to prevent, diagnose and manage serious illnesses including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, dementia that commonly afflict people in Asia and are seen as the biggest contributors to the gap between health span and lifespan.

The Asian market, which MetLife entered more than 60 years ago, accounts for about a quarter of the insurer's global earnings.

It has a presence in 10 countries, among which Japan, Korea and China are top markets.

Customer engagement

Offering a holistic solution is not MetLife's only means of differentiation. It also aims to set itself apart from its competitors through customer engagement,

"The average engagement in the industry in Asia is 1.3 times. We have launched an initiative to improve both quality and quantity of interactions with customers," Kapur said.

MetLife is making efforts to enhance interaction between agents and customers in Korea in which has a heavy agency-based insurance market, by building agents' expertise under a pilot program "Health Friends.”

"It is a well curated and structured curriculum that has been created with the help of leading medical practitioners and hospitals," the executive said.

"It produces a much better understanding of serious illnesses, services and enables meaningful dialogue with customers."

While the insurer has focused on physical interaction between agents and customers, technology is being incorporated to increase interaction qualitywise.

"The advantage of utilizing technology is not only about increasing interaction. It can make the interaction more meaningful," said the CMO.

"By using data and analytics to provide additional information to agents, the quality of the conversation can be improved."

Through 360 Health, MetLife partners with a Silicon Valley-based startup to offer a co-diagnosis service to customers in China, which allows them to have a three-way dialogue between their doctor in China and a doctor in the U.S. to discuss the patient's diagnosis and treatment options.

Marketing strategy

As a marketing guru, who was also led marketing at Citibank and Hindustan Unilever Limited, the CMO offered some insight into marketing strategy.

"It boils down to spending enough time and resources to understand needs of customers and what gap exists in terms of how those needs are addressed by the company and competition," he said.

Kapur assumed his current position at MetLife in May 2017.

He was included in Campaign Asia's "Asia Pacific Power 50 List" of top marketing leaders in the region in December 2018.