The implementation of bancassurance activity in the banking industry helps to increase customer satisfaction, the competitive environment's strength, and the creation of new insurance products. Banks' top strategic goals are to improve company protection by expanding their product offerings in response to customer demand. A potential future option that will also advance on the international market is the distribution of insurance through the bancassurance system. Bank representatives suggest that among the elements required to create this service are the diversification of insurance products sold by banks, the expansion of consumer financial education, and digitalization.

Points of discussion:

1. How can bancassurance providers balance the interests of their banking and insurance customers while also maintaining profitability?

2. What are the key regulatory challenges faced by bancassurance providers, and how can they stay compliant while still offering innovative products and services?

3. In a rapidly evolving market, how can bancassurance providers stay ahead of the competition and continue to offer relevant, high-quality products and services to their customers?

Speaker Bio: Sonali Verma, is the Head of Digital Bancassurance at Manulife Asia. In her current role at Manulife Financial for Asia, Sonali is responsible for creating and consolidating experience frameworks across the Bancassurance business which has a significant contribution to Manulife Asia’s business. This includes building next-in-class large insurers’ digital experience infrastructure across Asia by leveraging innovation principles, analytics and insight, and setting and driving key performance indicators.  Sonali is also responsible for a Manulife joint fund, Technology and Innovation Fund.

Prior to joining Manulife, Sonali worked at Citibank Singapore for almost nine years. She launched and led a key initiative where her team embedded the ‘Client Excellence’ philosophy across Citibank Singapore. During her tenure, Citibank was ranked number one in the category in CSISG, an index compiled by the Singapore government to gauge client satisfaction scores across various industries.

Sonali has over 20 years of rich experience in digital transformation and viability, organizational operations, service excellence and technology evaluation. She has worked in leadership and senior management roles with large global organizations helping them in identifying and deploying appropriate digital solutions for improving client impacting metric.