Innovation has been a buzzword in the business world over the past couple years because good and practical innovation is a powerful tool and a smart strategy for strengthening business and creating opportunities for partners in a more sustainable manner. This concept is the key to unlocking opportunities for business growth. Areegator, Ngern Tid Lor’s online insurance sales platform, is one of the innovations of opportunity. It not only actualizes this concept but also embodies the dream of Ngern Tid Lor to help Thai people to access insurance products more inclusively to improve their quality of life, while enables Ngern Tid Lor’s insurance broker business and our partner insurance companies to manage sale leads conveniently and to generate income for sustainable growth.
How has Areegator started and what have they been through to pave this path of opportunity for Ngern Tid Lor and our partners? Mr. Charnrit Sookplang, SVP Insurance Broker Analysis & Strategy, Insurance Broker Lead, and Mr. Teerawat Sajarone, AVP Insurance Broker Analysis & Strategy, Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited, who have involved in the development of Areegator from the beginning, have answers for the questions.
How Ngern Tid Lor’s Insurance Broker Business Gets Started
Charnrit and Teerawat told us that because Ngern Tid Lor was initially operating in the vehicle title loan business, we better understood the hardships faced by customers and their families in times of unexpected events and the importance of insurance as it could help lighten their financial worries. As such, Ngern Tid Lor began offering payment protection insurance (PPI) 10 years ago.
“Over the past five years, we have been seriously engaged in the auto insurance broker business because we noticed the opportunity from the non-life insurance market, which was worth about 200 billion baht at that time. There were no obvious leading companies in this business. So Ngern Tid Lor began to tap into the insurance market through branches and telesales.”
Creating and Delivering Opportunities for Growing Together: The Concept of Areegator
After entering the insurance broker business, Ngern Tid Lor began to develop a system to compare insurance premiums offered by different companies and facilitate premium installment payments which allowed customers to choose the right and affordable premium. Ngern Tid Lor’s commitment to customers also led them to more business opportunities. As Charnrit and Teerawat told us:
“Before developing the system, we conducted a market survey and found that there were about 50,000 non-life-insurance agents in Thailand. Some agents were limited in how they could grow their business because firstly they didn’t have a premium comparison system to give their customers more options.
Secondly, they could offer their customers insurance premiums from two or three companies only as a security deposit of 50,000 to 100,000 baht was required to open an account with an insurance company. A large security deposit was needed to become an agent for more insurance companies. Thirdly, they required an upfront payment in full. It was also possible to allow customers to pay premium in 2-3 installments, but any longer than that would be very expensive to agents.
So, we tried to make this business more sustainable and to create more opportunities for these agents by developing a system to compare insurance premiums and coverage conditions to enable agents to offer their customers more options. We also developed a system to facilitate premium installment payments and sales promotion services that Ngern Tid Lor and our partners (more than 15 leading insurance companies) provided on the Areegator platform. This will enable agents to earn more and grow their businesses, while Ngern Tid Lor profits from platform service fees, our insurance partners to gain opportunities to sell more insurance products through our network across the country, and finally, provide opportunity to 15 million Thais who own vehicles to access the insurance products that match their financial conditions without incurring large debts.”
Charnrit and Teerawat talked about the naming of this Areegator platform, saying that:
“This kind of platform that collects data from other sources is normally called ‘Aggregator’ in English. When we were brainstorming the name of our platform, we tried to come up with short Thai words that were easy to understand and at the same time conveyed the concept of the platform. Then, we thought of removing the ‘aggre’ in ‘aggregator’ and replacing it with the Thai word ‘aree’, which means ‘kindness’ or ‘generousity.’ ‘Areegator’ conveys our intent to create and deliver opportunities so all parties to benefit from our platform.”
Strategy and Technology Behind the Development of Areegator
By focusing on opportunity and sustainability, it did not take long for Areegator to gain the trust of independent insurance agents across the country. In just over a year, more than 3,000 agents signed up to join the platform, an increase of 200% since the day it was launched. Charnrit and Teerawat told us that this success was in part due to TIDLOR cultures that promote experiment to lead change, encouraging employees to learn and create innovation through trial and error.
“At Ngern Tid Lor, when an innovation is conceptualized, we will create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test how the target audience will respond. In the case of Areegator, we used a prototype platform, which was used by our branch staff to sell insurance, to test with a group of agents and used the feedback to improve and better meet the needs of them. We also presented the prototype platform of Areegator at the RISE Hong Kong event to collect comments from industry experts.”
That Areegator was quickly released to market and has constantly evolved by adding new features, owing much to agile and scrum-team working, which divides the project into smaller parts and continues to measure and improve team efficiency and effectiveness as a start-up company that emphasizes flexibility when solving problems and constantly challenging itself to experiment with new things.
The main technology behind the development of Areegator is API for connecting with external partners, such as Thailand Post and insurance companies. This helps agents to sell insurance more conveniently. For example, they can check the policy delivery status and download a copy of the policy online instantly. The Photo Link system also allows these agents to take photos of cars to be insured for initial verification and approval, helping agents to make insurance transactions faster than ever before.
We will certainly see new systems and features developed by our team for Areegator in the future. They are determined to go beyond its limits to enable Thai people to access insurance and to deliver opportunities to insurance agents to grow sustainably together.