When talking about Ngern Tid Lor, many people may think of a FinTech company that delivers financial opportunities through microfinance services to the underbanked. Today, Ngern Tid Lor also offers TIDLOR Insurance Broker, another business of the company that has soared to number 2 in the insurance brokerage industry in just six years since its official launch in 2016.
There is an uncommon background for such a leap forward; we will take a look at the growth path of TIDLOR Insurance Brokerage to find out how they have started.
Good Intentions: A Key to Driving Force
In 2013, Ngern Tid Lor was licensed to engage in the non-life insurance broker business. It began with the company’s intention to create opportunities for the underbanked and low-to-middle income self-employed people to access insurance products, which will help reduce the burden of expenses from damages that may occur to life and assets. As Mrs. Athitaya Phoonwathu, Head of Insurance Broker Department, and Mr. Charnrit Sookplang, SVP Insurance Broker Analysis, and Strategy, told us:
“As a company engaging in the vehicle title loan business for decades, we understand the customers’ need to protect their assets, mainly the cars they use to make a living because if they’re involved in an unexpected accident without insurance, they will not only lose income but also have to pay compensation or medical expenses out of their own pocket. So it’s better to have insurance coverage. However, for our target customers, insurance premiums can be a rather heavy burden and insurance product information is not always easy to understand. Moreover, news about untrustworthy insurance agents may affect their confidence when buying insurance.
When deciding to start the insurance brokerage business, we think that insurance was necessary for our customers. We want to provide them a betterment of the quality of life by having an insurance policy while creating the opportunity for the company to generate more income from the insurance broker business.”
A Small Team: Always Ready to Learn and Face Every Challenge
Athitaya told us that TIDLOR Insurance Brokerage started with a small team of only 3-5 people who were new to the insurance business. Every step was full of difficulty and challenge.
“Since Ngern Tid Lor’s expertise lies in microfinance, which the company has operated for over 10 years, every department at that time had the main responsibility of supporting lending services. The TIDLOR Insurance Brokerage team was only a small part of the Marketing Department. It was quite challenging to analyze products and insurance companies to partner with. Because everyone doubted that Ngern Tid Lor would succeed in selling insurance, almost no insurance companies wanted to talk to us or wanted us to sell their products.
On the other hand, we thought that a partnership is not just about paperwork and a contract to sell their insurance products. It’s more like dating someone. We also need to ensure that he or she will treat our family (i.e., our customers) well. So, we asked to visit the back office of the insurance companies to observe their services and checked the market or social media to find out if there were any complaints about these companies.”
Furthermore, another big challenge was to send thousands of our branch staff to take an exam to obtain a license to sell insurance.
“We wanted to do things right to build customer trust. Therefore, we needed to make a plan to tutor, teach, and train our staff before letting them take the exam. The insurance sales license exam is not easy, and not everyone would pass the exam the first time.”
At the same time, the TIDLOR Insurance Brokerage team must try to set standards to create transparency in the insurance brokerage business. As Charnrit said:
“We are an intermediary in the insurance industry. To build trust and confidence among customers, we need to do everything transparently. This is what we have learned from our loan business. We pay great attention to documents that customers should receive on the date of insurance purchase such as receipts and coverage agreements because there are stories about brokers receiving payments from customers but not delivering them to insurance companies. Some brokers charge unfair fees. Thus, we focused on setting standards from the beginning.”
Being Together to Overcome Every Problem
In 2016, our insurance team was split to form the Insurance Broker Department due to the evident growth in the insurance brokerage business. A system was developed to enable every branch to sell insurance and to allow customers to receive policies instantly at branches.
We were also the first in the market to initiate the 0% interest installment campaign to allow customers to access the insurance they needed more easily and conveniently; it has become a standard for other brokers to follow. Moreover, we set up more insurance sales channels, including Telesales, Ngern Tid Lor mobile application, and Areegator, an online selling platform to help retail brokers sell more insurance and grow together with us.
As Athitaya and Charnrit told us, the key that has been strengthened TIDLOR Insurance Brokerage strong as today is:
“TIDLOR culture, ‘Thirst for Wisdom and Self-Development’ that is embedded in our DNA allows us to overcome challenges in the development of our business.
Our strength is also due to our NTLers. At a time when the Insurance Broker business was still new and unfamiliar to us, our branch team leaders put their full dedication to adapting and learning together with us. These leaders were a key in driving sales and encouraging branch staff to learn. Our Operations and Collections teams helped support back-office functions, and there was also our Customer Services team, which helped contact customers. Everyone lent a hand.
We also need to thank our partners indeed, who understood us and worked with us to develop the system. They are not only just business partners but also our countable partners; they help analyze data to develop insurance products.”
This is why TIDLOR Insurance has grown rapidly.
Because we believe that we can grow by leaps and bounds if we work together.