Some pioneering life insurance companies in Asia have used the Internet as a distribution channel for almost 10 years, but the portion of premium income from this channel remains very small.

In the report Life Insurance E-Business in Asia: Trends and Best Practices, Celent looks at life insurance e-business growth in Asia and identifies best practices in the life insurance online sales area, including leveraging video in online insurance, improving content quality and readability, leveraging multiple communication methods, improving the user experience, and creating well-organized websites. Celent also examines the reasons and analyzes the drivers for the development of life insurance e-business in Asia, projecting the growth of the market over the next five years.

The functionality of insurers’ websites extends beyond direct sales. They can be used as a marketing tool and for lead generation. Insurers’ websites are a platform for customer service and agent service, and are capable of helping to improve sales quality and straight-through processing of the traditional channels.

This report focuses on insurance new business purchase through the electronic channel.

“The online purchase process usually starts from premium calculation, which is fine for auto insurance or travel insurance, but not good enough for life insurance,” says Wenli Yuan, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Asian Financial Services Group and author of the report. “Concept delivery and needs analysis are very important steps in life insurance sales.”

This report examines the growth of Internet users, mobile broadband subscriptions, and smartphone and tablet users in Asian countries. It looks at life insurance e-business market size growth trends and online product trends, identifying key points in the life insurance online sales process, introducing best practices, and making suggestions for life insurers with regard to improving life insurance online sales.

This 36-page report contains 23 figures and 7 tables.