Life Insurance Marketing in Bangladesh

Abstract

Insurance, which is called unsought product in marketing, is defined as a co-operative device to spread the loss caused by a particular risk and life insurance is explained as the contract, whereby the insurer in consideration of a premium undertakes to pay a certain sum of money either on the death of the insured or on the expiry of a fixed period. On the other hand, marketing is managing profitable relationship with customers. The present paper has attempted to critically describe the marketing of insurance in Bangladesh. For this study 110 respondents have been interviewed which includes 10 insurers, 65 policy-holders, and 35 non- policyholders. As a marketing offer, insurance consists of a number of product levels which may include risk coverage against a particular financial loss, marketing activities of formulating the insurance contract and designing the insurance policy, the settlement of the claim if the loss occurred, fulfilling the investment need of the customer as it provides a certain benefit against the insured amount of the policyholder, providing various financial facilities to the customers such as getting tax exemption, acting as a guarantor and so on. It is seen that marketing channel of insurance marketing consists of direct and indirect channels. The study depicts that insurance companies are not marketing oriented and they are also void of marketing research. The study shows the mentionable problems of insurance marketing in Bangladesh such as low per capita income, poor knowledge of agents, illiteracy of prospects (target customers), religious superstition, low awareness of prospects, low savings of target market, lack of continuity, lack of reminder, negligence of policy holders, poor services to policy holders, low return to the consumers, and lack of reliability and so on. To overcome the setback and improve the performance of insurance marketing, some measures can be taken e. g. more training to sales force, building awareness of prospects, diversified policies, more marketing research for improved strategies, improving commitment of sales force, new legislation, improve professional ethics, quick settlement of claims, expansion of coverage and so on.