A simple research on Manulife Philippines

Insurance

Introduction

Manulife Philippines is a leading life insurance provider in the Philippines,

established in 1907. They are a subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corporation, one of the
world’s biggest financial services companies, based in Canada. The company started in
1901 when the first Manulife life insurance policy was sold in the Philippines. From then
on, Manulife has quickly become one of the top insurance companies in the Philippines.
They have steadily worked towards their vision to be the most professional financial
services organization in the world by providing forward-thinking solutions for their
clients’ most significant financial decisions. Being people’s trusted life insurance
company, they offer tailor-fit solutions that meet the needs of every stage of a person’s
life. Whether they are preparing for major purchases, retirement, healthcare, or their
children’s education, the company’s flexible plans let their clients make the most out of
their money. They are also dedicated to making it easier for their clients to save, protect
and grow their finances to make their family’s lives better. Moreover, they offer diverse
policies and products tailored to the needs and budget of each client for every stage of
life. From financial solutions to life insurance plans for personal or business-related
needs, they have got you covered.

Goals and Objectives

One of the main objectives of Manulife Philippines is not limited to being able to
provide the best and reliable service to all its policyholders but to also be readily
available to its business partners - no less than its distributors or insurance advisers.
After conducting an interview with the insurance agent of the company, we found out
one problem the company is facing is that the clients couldn’t pay their contributions on
due dates. Since Manulife is a company that handles money of different kinds of people,
constant monitoring and follow-ups are needed for the clients to be updated in terms of
its payments. The following are the goals of this research that will help for the system
development of the company:

1. Having a system that enables clients to be notified with their upcoming

contributions on its due dates.

2. Engage the services of collection agencies to ensure target payments or

collections are met.

3. Better financial planning of the client's finances to minimize due payment

problems.

Current Procedures and Policies

Life insurance can often be puzzling, if you deal with it for the first time. This can
comprehensively cause you to refrain from applying, which is not a good notion for
something that is done to protect risk. In reality, the procedure in applying for an
insurance, more particularly a life insurance has simple steps to follow. More often than
not, a financial advisor or an insurance agent is needed to assist you in your journey
towards getting insurance, with the following step by step procedure:

1. Getting a proposal. This is the initial step in getting insurance. This is where you
see your plan package with the following inclusions: paying period, contract price,
mode of payment, benefits, beneficiaries, disability program, etc.. This proposal is
always prepared by the financial advisor or an insurance agent for you.

2. The Application. This is where a prospective policy holder discusses details with
the financial advisor and would include personal information such as the customer’s
basic information, health issues and questions, and benefit information.
 3. The Medical Exam. In order for Manulife to process insurance policy, the
customer needs to submit his or herself for a medical examination. This is an
important step for the company to determine the eligibility of the customer to avail of
an insurance policy from them. This is where risks often come in at the company’s
end.

4. Underwriting. This is the process where the company reviews the application of
the customer. This is the stage wherein the company determines the risks with the
client by accessing his or her personal information, health history to qualify a client
and to determine the cost or rates of the insurance package. In layman’s term, this is
the assessment portion in the process. The clients must be patient in this stage
because the process may take a few weeks.

5. The Approval/Decision. This is the final stage of the process where the customer
will either be granted an insurance policy better than the agent’s proposal, or worse
rate or package than what your financial advisor qualified for you.

It is binding in all organizations to proactively identify and mitigate potentially dangerous

or harmful situations. Written policies and procedures are important tools for preventing
losses and defending your organization in legal proceedings should they occur. Ideally,
employees and volunteers should be asked to sign off or otherwise acknowledge their
receipt and understanding of your organization’s policies and procedures.

Identified problems

After gathering data from the agent, we have identified that some of the problems
faced by the company is that agents have no access to clients’ profile. The agents are
limited to a system that only generates proposal and amendments to beneficiaries,
change mode form, variable life funds update. Another problem that the company is
facing is is optimizing its contact center performance. The number of of challenges
faced by the contact center are growing. Manulife currently uses the standard hotline
and email channels .However, customers are demanding more from their interactions
and the landscape has changed with the advent of new technologies. The channels
preferred by the customers are evolving, with web chat streaking ahead as the core
channel of choice, followed by phone, social and video. As a result, the contact center is
the logical central port of call for “omnichannel” behavior. This places an increasing
pressure on the contact center to evolve, yet fast first-time resolution of enquiries
remain an important metric to drive customer satisfaction levels. Another problem is that
millennials are hesitant on acquiring insurance especially on the health department. part
of which maybe the cause of limited customer care channels, as well as the trend
among the younger generations in the Philippine society. Part of customer care is
catering to first time clients where some find the process to be complicated.

Case Diagram
Recommendation
● Effective data management gives them a better understanding of customer
behaviour when, how and why they interact with the agency. This means that
they can offer a personalised service, pre-empt problems, and tailor products in
response to changing needs.

● Technology can deliver. Manulife can put data at the heart of the business,
allowing agents to make decisions based on hard-edged analysis rather than
intuition.

● Automated reports - These are tools that will let the company monitor sales and
marketing key-performance indicators (KPIs) such as quote-to-policy
 conversions, policies sold, and new inquiries. This will help management of the
company to decide if agents are as effective as they should be, or if marketing
spend is producing a good return on investment or not.

● Dashboard Software - Is sometime like a client portal that is an electronic

gateway to a gathering of digital files, services, and information, available over
the Internet through a web browser. Dashboard software is most often applied to
a sharing mechanism between an organization and its clients.

● Chat system- A mix of chatbot and actual customer service agents to provide
efficient and engaging accommodation of both potential and current customers.
Easy to use, accessible anywhere with wifi connection as well as customer
oriented agents.

● Seamless advising - Let the advisers and clients connect the first time they visit
the website. One of the concerns of clients is the multi step process of meeting or
contacting an adviser or agent. With this feature, clients may choose over a list of
advisers near their area. After submitting data, the adviser or agent will contact
the client.

Benefits
One of the benefits of conducting this study is to actually identify the existing
issues or problems that the aforementioned company is currently experiencing. In this
way, we can help the company create ways or possible solutions in order for them to
address it in the best possible way or in other words, in a different perspective. This in
turn won’t just benefit the company but also their insurance holders as well. With our
technology today, we can maximize our resources by possibly putting software
integrated answering machines which would benefit Manulife and the caller or their
clients. This is due to the reason that one of the problems that they are currently
experiencing is taking a long time before an agent answers the call. This will cut that
time off and it will save time for the caller and for Manulife as well. They will also have a
higher chance of garnering more clients that would want to apply or inquire about their
insurance plans and etc.

When planning to further reach out to its potential clients, a more intuitive
customer service system will be implemented. This leads to an increase in sales.
Further improvements on the website would also be added.

Less customer turnover to other insurance companies. The new system will be
built centered around the satisfaction of customers with efficiency. (Net insurance
premiums earned for the year 2017 17,638,168,076 . Insurance premium sales are
expected to increase from the implementation of the new system. Expected increase is
15%. 2,645,725,211.4)

Feasibility
Technical feasibility- The technology to be used is widely available since they’re being
implemented by several companies in the Philippines. Which also means that
availability is not an issue.

Economic feasibility - Manulife currently is a multinational company that is currently

operating in 17 countries. A company of this size should not have a problem on funding
the system.

Legal feasibility - All data gathered from the clients shall not be disclosed and will be
kept with privacy in compliance with the law.

Operational feasibility - Minimal manpower and operational changes only will be needed
to run the new system. Since the new system implements already existing positions.

Schedule feasibility - The implementation has 4 main phases meetings, design,

development and testing which will be done in 10 weeks.
Plan of action (gantt chart)

Task PIC Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week
10

IT I.T.
depart Depart
ment ment,
meeting Busines
Analyst

Interde I.T.,
partme Sales,
nt Service,
meeting Busines
s
analyst

Procure I.T.
ment of Depart
hardwar ment
e and
softwar
e

System Busines
Design s
Analyst

Progra I.T
mming depart
ment

System I.T
Layout depart
ment

Testing I.T. ,
sales,
service,
admin