FALCON Insurance is placing importance on selling its personal lines online, as it believes this channel will gain popularity among individual customers over the next decade.
"Ever since Falcon was established [in 2006], we have believed that the online channel would be the main one for selling policies. Therefore, we have no need to use agents, [company] branches or banks to capture individual customers," company president Sopa Kanjanarintr said.
Even though bancassurance is on the rise, Falcon has no plan to rely on this channel as it acknowledges that the competition in bancassurance is intense and could reduce margins.
"We should [use sales channels] that have few players and offer high margins. Therefore we prefer to innovate in terms of products and channels to access digital-savvy customers," she said.
Sopa believes that physical bank branches will eventually be transformed into financial advisories and places for lending more than normal transactions, which means the chance to offer insurance products to retail customers will be gradually decreased.
Falcon, a medium-sized non-life insurer, has expertise in commercial lines.
The low insurance penetration rate in Thailand and the expected growth of online sales channels encouraged Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings, the major shareholder of Falcon Insurance (Hong Kong), to set up a joint |venture with Thailand's Wanglee family, the owner of Navakij Insurance.
For the commercial lines, the main distribution channel will be regional brokers, while personal lines will rely on online channels.
Falcon believes the trend towards online insurance sales is assured, and therefore is injecting a lot of money to strengthen this channel. Within 10 years, most people will use the Internet, whether computer or mobile based, for transactions, Sopa said.