Digit had previously won ‘General Insurance Company of the Year’ at Asia Insurance Review Awards, Singapore, in 2019 and 2020.

Bengaluru : Digit Insurance, a unicorn general insurance company offering health, car, bike, travel, home and shop insurance, announced it has been conferred with the ‘Digital Insurer of the Year’  award at the 25th edition of the prestigious Asia Insurance Industry Awards 2021 (AIIA) held virtually on 15 November 2021.

Digit, the only Indian insurer to win this year, bagged this award for its efforts in showing how technology-backed solutions can be scaled and sustained to make insurance simple for customers. Digit is also the youngest insurance company globally to win this year and had won the ‘General Insurance Company of the Year’ award at AIIA back-to-back in 2019 and 2020.

Digital transformation was also the overall key focus for the jury this year. “The year 2020 was entirely focused on how the industry could deliver the best experience to its customers by adopting digital — and most of the entries for the 25th AIIA awards this year focused on that,” AIIA said in a statement. The Singapore-based Asia Insurance Industry Awards, which is conducted by Asia Insurance Review, saw over 320 nominations across Asia for different categories and shortlisted around 50 insurers, brokers, risk managers, service providers and industry leaders as finalists.

The nominations went through a rigorous screening process and were judged by eminent global leaders of top companies like HSBC Life (International), KPMG, AIG Japan, AIA Group, Swiss Re Asia, PwC, among others from countries like China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and India.

On receiving the award, Mr Vivek Chaturvedi, Chief Marketing Officer, Digit Insurance said, “We are humbled and delighted that our efforts have been recognised at the Asia Insurance Industry Awards by our global peers for third year in a row. Our innovative tech-enabled solutions are at the centre of our growth story, and it has helped us expand our customer base and partner ecosystem in a short span of time.”

Key highlights:

• One of the youngest companies to win three awards at Asia Insurance Industry Awards in three consecutive years within 4 years of operation
• Digit the only Indian insurer to win Asia Insurance Industry Awards this year
• Asia Insurance Industry Awards one of the most prestigious awards in the insurance industry running from the last 25 years
• The nominations were judged by a panel of 26 distinguished judges and independently audited by KPMG.

Digital capabilities of the companies drove the transformation journey worldwide across industries, including the insurance sector. Digit, which recently completed four years, banked on its proficient tech capabilities, and launched country’s first Covid insurance cover in February 2020. The company that functions 100 per cent on the cloud was able to easily enable its partners and employees to transition into the work-from-home mode to seamlessly service the customers.

Digit also scaled up its self-service processes and deployed Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models to offer customers real-time assistance to submit documents and automate claims settlement. The company has serviced 4.38 lakh requests from customers just on WhatsApp so far this year till September 2021 and has also developed an in-house AI-powered bot “Aria” to help partners generate real-time quotes for its products. “Our vision of having a digital ecosystem in place from the very beginning with zero touchpoints helped us shine throughout the pandemic and helped us stay ahead of the curve in a year which has otherwise been tough for the industry,” said Chaturvedi.

Digit in September was also named one of the top 250 fintech companies globally, using technology to transform financial services by CB Insights, a US-based market intelligence agency. Despite a pandemic year, the company turned profitable on IFRS basis and grew by 44 per cent with a premium of Rs 3,243 crore (as of March 2021), while the overall industry growth was about five per cent last year. It also managed to serve over 2 crore customers since its inception in 2017. Digit became India’s first unicorn of 2021 in January at a valuation of USD 1.9 billion and is raising up to USD 200 million (subject to IRDAI approval) at USD 3.5 billion valuation.