Sanasa Life Insurance Company PLC assures commitment to affordable life insurance for vulnerable communities

• Gains global recognition for its COVID-19 response initiative

Sanasa Life Insurance Company PLC (SLICL), a top micro insurance company in Sri Lanka, assures its commitment to facilitate underserved low income and rural communities to access affordable life insurance as it gains global recognition for its COVID-19 response initiative to retain insurance policies of tens of thousands vulnerable communities in the country. 

Amidst the challenging operating environment due to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, SLICL showed resilience and agility in adapting to the new normal while managing to post a healthy operational and financial performance, while achieving a record 29.3% Year-on-Year (YoY) in Gross Written Premiums (GWP) to reach Rs. 694.4 million in the year.

Supported by over 1.5 million members of around 8,000 Sanasa societies across the island, the company aims offer a versatile product range with value added products and a ‘best-fit’ to meet the insurance needs its key target market of low income and rural based communities under its multi-layered—focus on the key aspects.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, SLICL launched several initiatives to support its key stakeholders including its vulnerable policyholders who were hit-hard by the impacts of the pandemic. 

Due to these initiatives which had far-reaching impacts on its stakeholders, it won several international awards. Most recently, World Economics Magazine awarded SLICL with ‘Best Life Insurance COVID-19 Response Initiative Sri Lanka 2021’ and ‘Most Sustainable Micro Insurance Company’ awards.

Further, APAC Insiders awarded SLICL as the ‘Most Trusted for Life Insurance Services 2020’ while International Business Magazine 2020 awarded it with the ‘Best Life Insurance Provider for Micro Insurance’ and ‘Best Employee Benefits Provider in Sri Lanka’.

Sanasa Life Insurance Company PLC Chairman and Independent/Non-Executive 

Director T. Karunasena who was appointed to the top spot of the firm at the very beginning of the pandemic spoke to Daily FT on the firm’s journey, key achievements and future prospects.

During the discussion, he highlighted the importance of signing up for an insurance policy in particular for small businesses and daily-wage earners as well other vulnerable segments in the country, which stand to risk the most unexpected and unfortunate events.

Following are excerpts:

Q: SLICL recently listed on the CSE. Could you tell us about your journey at SLICL and tell us a bit about the recent accomplishments of SLICL?

 Having served 43 years in the banking sector, I was a banker prior to entering into the insurance sector through SANASA Life Insurance Co. PLC (SLICL). I joined the Sanasa movement through Sanasa Development Bank where I served as the Deputy Chairman for nine years up until my retirement. Thereafter, I joined Sanasa Insurance Company and then I moved to the newly-established SLICL upon the segregation of Life and General Insurance operations into two entities. 

While I was serving as a Director at SLICL, I was appointed to fill the seat vacated by the SLICL Founding Chairman upon his retirement in February 2020. Immediately after taking over as the new SLICL, Chairman, we had to face the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic, which left many companies perplexed in uncharted waters.  

However, within a short period of time, our company was able to recommence operations as we swiftly adapted to the new normal brought by the pandemic. As a result, we were able to achieve almost all of our targets by the end of 2020 containing the disruption caused by the pandemic to the first and second quarters of the year. 

This year, we won a number of international and local awards, recognising our contribution to the country’s insurance industry and to our clients in the midst of a pandemic. In particular, World Economics, an internationally-acclaimed magazine, awarded us the titles of ‘Life Insurance COVID-19 Response Initiative Sri Lanka 2021’ and ‘Most Sustainable Micro Insurance Company’ in evaluating the special projects initiated by the company during the pandemic. 

These awards were given out after looking at various criteria. In general terms, World Economics expects these awards to offer an honest and engaging platform for companies and businesses (traditional as well as startups) as they continuously re-engage with their partners and consumers while focusing on agility, innovation, flexibility, speed, and value through people. And, this is what we have been striving to become. As our company is based on principles and values of SANASA, we are committed to create value through people for people.

Q: Could you briefly describe some of the key achievements of SLICL in the past year amidst the pandemic situation?

 As you know in a pandemic situation, people tend to run into difficulties in paying their bills including insurance premiums and as a result their policies risk going under. However, we were able to afford them while validating their lapsed policies by ensuring that the arrears premiums were paid by the company. 

This was initiated with the support of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale  Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), to support policy holders who were struggling to meet their premium obligations. Under this facility, we extended one-year premium free cover for 21,000 policy holders. This was an immense relief to our policyholders. As we engaged in micro insurance operations, our policyholders were the hardest-hit segment of the society when the pandemic hit. 

We also supported our entire workforce in meeting their needs. We also collaborated to support the Sanasa Societies in their efforts to assist members and others in the community who were affected by the virus and travel restrictions. 

Further, we took measures to support hospitals and the healthcare system by supplying them with required medical equipment. These are the greatest achievements for the company during this particular year where we underwent very abnormal conditions. 

Q: How did you manage to prosper during this pandemic and what is the strategy that you developed to face such challenges?

The key thing was that we made sure that we looked after our employees; we never let them down; we never cut their benefits or reduced their salaries. We took special measures to look after them during the peak of the outbreaks of the virus. As we always keep our employees’ morale up, it paid a good dividend for us as a company benefiting all stakeholders. 

Q: Many of Sri Lanka’s life industry players report a growing enthusiasm among the public on insurance products as they become wary of unexpected events which could impact their lives, properties and income streams. Do you also see a similar trend in your targeted market?

 I believe this is high time that people should know the value of the insurance. They hadn’t realised the value of insurance, because people have been dependent on collectiveness to support each other in difficult times. That's an inherent feature of our society and they were not able to identify the value of insurance coverage. However, under this global emergency helping each other has become almost impossible because everyone is adversely affected by it. 

We are taking that message to the people through our social media and multi-channel approach. So, we say ‘this is the time for you to link with us and we will look after you’. Even when we look at developing new products, we take into consideration these factors.

Q: How did the pandemic push SLICL to embrace the smart working culture, enabling employees to Work from Home (WFH)?

 Even before this pandemic came in, we were very much focused on digitalization. Our board and the management team headed by the CEO were very keen on working on digital platforms. We were training our employees, which is why they were able to start Working from Home (WFH) to attend to all customer needs digitally within a very short period of time.

We frequently discuss how we can use new technology tools to improve our efficiency and to serve our customers better, because we have identified the benefits of digitalisation and automation of certain processes instead of continuing to operate them manually. 

Q: Sanasa can be identified as the most prestigious people's movement in Sri Lanka. How do you describe the support and the guidance given to you from the movement? 

 The Sanasa movement which was founded and developed by Dr. P.A. Kiriwandeniya in 1978 has expanded to a very large network by now, consisting of over 8,500 primary societies, 39 district unions and one General Federation in terms of the co-operative aspect of the movement. In addition to SLICL, there are other organisations such as SANASA Campus, Sanasa General Insurance, Sanasa International and Sanasa Development Bank. Altogether, the membership of SANASA Co-operative societies tops 3.5 million. So that is a very strong network. 

Our two insurance companies are always linked to them; in particular, we have a special distribution channel in place named ‘Society Channel’ to work with those societies and their membership. Therefore, they have been a key strength to our firm and business. The Sanasa Movement at core supports our insurance company because of their ownership in our company. 

Q: Sri Lanka’s informal sector in particular remains exposed to many risks while being underserved by the insurance industry. What’s your opinion on this?

 In Sri Lanka, insurance penetration is very low, at around 12%, which is lower than the other countries in the region. Basically, we have underpenetrated market segments with underserved customers, in particular at grass-root level. So, that’s our main target; we serve the underserved; we try to take insurance coverage to the grassroots level. 

Our company was initially formed by Dr. Kiriwandeniya when he saw how people struggled to recover from difficult times when they were faced with unexpected disasters with no build up reserves. That’s why he has taken the initiative to establish an insurance firm such as Sanasa Insurance where micro insurance is the main focus. We always keep his vision and mission in mind and pursue it for the wellbeing of the people.

Q: How do you see the company and the insurance industry in the future ahead?

 We have moved up in the rankings in Sri Lanka’s insurance industry, establishing ourselves as a relevant player within the industry when compared to a few years ago. Our plan is to move up in the ladder year by year and move up to a higher rank in the industry. Annually, we have also been increasing our market share which stands at 1.5% at present compared to below one percent market share we had a few years back.  As we are in the process of drafting our new strategic plan, I’m confident that the company is prepared to face future challenges. 

In terms of product offering, we want to differentiate ourselves while offering products to meet the needs of the people in particular in rural areas as well as micro business. For example, we have insurance products introduced for daily-wage earners where the premium collections take place on a daily basis.  Although the daily premium is small, they build up a good premium at the end of the month. 

Many of them probably haven’t even imagined a life insurance policy based on monthly premium charges which may look not affordable for them, but when you pay Rs. 100 per day, it seems possible. That’s a kind of a line of innovative thinking that we focus on to get more people to consider buying insurance. So our main focus is on the affordability of people to buy an insurance policy. 

In addition, there are various initiatives that we are collaboratively working with Sanasa primary societies where their members will be linked to our insurance covers.