This is the ‘Win with Stories’ newsletter. It’s focused on helping founders, entrepreneurs and business owners. Every week I send an email with a business or life message wrapped in a short story. I also share one actionable tip to help you enhance your business storytelling skills.
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Acko Insurance’s Varun Dua means business
Exactly three years ago, a headline in Moneycontrol(dot)com yelled ‘Why Acko General Insurance refuses to follow the herd’.
To be honest, I didn’t know much about Acko back then.
To be honest, I didn’t know much about Acko even until about two weeks ago.
Yes, I had seen the brand on e-commerce websites while checking out and making payments. And I did know that it was a digital-first insurance company.
It was only on the ‘First Principles’ podcast by The Ken that I got to know a thing or two about the company.
One, that they are a digital-only insurance company. You cannot buy an Acko Insurance through an agent.
I also learnt that all large insurance companies run at a loss if you consider only their premiums business. They make money on the interest they earn from the premium they collect over a period of time.
If they did not make any interest on premiums, all of them would be loss-making!
I had no clue about this(maybe some of you already did).
Varun Dua’s two-hour long podcast with Rohin Dharmakumar(CEO and cofounder of The Ken) is up there for me.
There were many other insights that Varun shared in the episode.
Sample a few:
- Why the insurance agent is not your friend(they make customers migrate insurance companies basis who is giving them a better cut)
- Why insurance companies cannot own the customer relationship(since the insurance agents own it as is the business model)
- Another important thing: because the insurance-agent led model makes the system opaque(insurance companies know very little about the customer), the due diligence comes in during claims disbursal. So it’s easy for customers to get insurance but equally difficult to get their claims processed since that’s where insurance companies apply more scrutiny. In a scenario where insurance agencies own the relationship directly with customers, they can do a lot more due diligence to get the right customers in. That will then help the insurance companies disburse claims much faster when the customer actually needs the money.
I totally recommend listening to this podcast. Just look for ‘First Principles’ by The Ken wherever you get your podcasts.
One communication tip for today:
Varun Dua is a good speaker and pretty knowledgeable about the insurance industry. The insights on which he is building Acko as a digital-only insurance company are pretty solid.
But how does that help the communicator in you?
Here’s the tip: Share something new and valuable.
Varun has the ability to share new and valuable information throughout the conversation. And that’s something that most founders and leaders can learn from.
Be it customers, investors or team-members – audiences are craving new and valuable information.
If your content, communication or conversation is sharing what’s common knowledge, then your audience is not the most engaged.
So, reflect on your experience and knowledge. Learn what’s different and insightful. It will help you become a more effective communicator.
More importantly, it will also make you a better founder and leader.
That’s it from me today. Hope you found this newsletter useful 🙂
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