It was good to see you last week, and well done to the team for the results so far, quite staggering especially in the retail space. I went through the plan with the guys and it is good to see that they see that the renews are the major vulnerability to the business.
The following are the actions which they are deploying to address and create improvement –
· Target credit cards as the first mode for payment.
· Implement a concentrated drive to have the customers who purchased at the store to be taken to the instore ATM and activate the monthly auto pay service.
· Implement a conservation programme via CSR to re-contact customers who miss the 3rd month payment.
Here are my thoughts on the above, given the current customer profile who shop at BIG C and is buying the product, do not typically adopt credit card use and the current % of premiums paid by credit card from the channel is 5%. Then whilst point one is a correct action it is not something which is really any different to what is being currently adopted. The reality is that there is not the penetration of cards be credit (or debit card with funds available) to move the needle. The vast majority of the future premiums (93%) are being requested by customers to be taken from their savings accounts, funds permitting.
I don’t see the above changing collections significantly even with a greater focus on credit card. But we should look to push for this payment mode where possible.
Action 2. Comment : This commenced in August and so far has (according to your sales directors) has shown a 75% take up rate by customers who have been gone to the ATM to complete the auto pay activation. Given that the customer has paid the two months initial payment we will not see the impact of this action until the October premium becomes due.
This is encouraging but we need to recognize that deactivation can be completed as simply as activation and it will only pay when funds are available. Experience suggests that we won’t get the 75% flowing through in November, but improvement should be seen as activation is accepted when funds are available on a recurring basis. This needs to be a focus for each sale getting the ATM activation.
Action 3. Comment. This aspect is yet to commence, I would like to suggest that you have a discussion with Geoff Simms (New Direct Head) to get involved in help developing this team and identifying the keys approaches (which will need to be integrated) to support collections. Geoff has a lot of experience in this space and we will need a direct and F2F hybrid to make conservation work. It will take a number of different actions to get this support mechanism working well, so I would not envisage to see any improvements for at least two months from when activities commence in September. The main thing is that we are starting.
Lastly I did ask your guys to look at changing the product offering, currently 80% of the sales are a 15/20 endowment plan.
This product with such a far out maturity time line for these target customers lends itself to poor persistency. These customers will not pay for the next 15 years. So ongoing payments will be a challenge, even if we get through the first year, a more blended offering more appropriate for the target customer needs to be available. The team advised that they recognize this aspect and are working on alternatives and will discuss with product development.
Repricing is not an option for this segment, 12,000 Bht per annum is as far as these customers can go.
If we can get the product offering more balanced and the collections up to a minimum figure then we will be well on our way to making the channel really sustainable and leading.