MBR: How did the idea of bimabd.com come into being? What motivated you to start bimabd.com?

Bimabd.com: Bangladesh is the most underinsured country in the South East Asian region as per a report of Lloyds,published in 2018. Our initial objective was the development of this eco-system. Thus, we started to look for solutions and while discussing with clients, colleagues and industry experts we realized that a platform where people can avail multiple insurance products with minimal effort and get claims for their solutions faster can be one solution for such a large scale problem and that is how the idea of BimaBD. com was generated.

MBR: How was the response of people in the initial stage? How pandemic situation has affected your business?

Bimabd.com: As the insurance industry of our country already has a stigma of unfortunate sufferings, people were a bit skeptic at first. However, we still had good reviews from the deliveries made and have seen multiple referrals when they get decent services.
The business soon hit off with good traction until the first wave of covid 19 took place and during that time the business froze for around a month. It was when we constantly communicated with insurance companies and foreign reinsurers to develop a solution. In April 2020, we introduced rider’s accidental health insurance for Foodpanda with Covid-19 coverage, which was later provided to multiple companies for their employees.
There was a steep rise of orders in retail section when we reopened with around 25% growth on average every month for the next 2 quarters. We were then providing the motor act liability insurance which has been closed since December 2020 (Bangladesh currently being one of the few countries in the world without an Act Liability protection). Thus, we increased multiple product lines for people to manage their insurance in one place, this diversified the risks and allowed a better understanding of the market demand. 
Since then we have introduced multiple products through 8 insurance companies. The pandemic hasn’t been the easiest to cope up with but it also enabled a lot of people to get insurance online.

MBR: In an age of technological advancement and increasing internet accessibility, how are you making use of this advantage for the profitability of your business?

Bimabd.com: We strive to develop the easiest and fastest user journey to acquire insurance products as in Bangladesh most people are yet to adopt technology. The good thing is the majority of the population is still young and can adopt these services easily, which should create a good market share going forward. Digitizing insurance services also cuts down human processing errors, processing time and significantly reduce multiple risks of the consumer. The current landscape has enabled us to introduce many of our corporate products providing through ticketing platforms. Such as helmet brands, OTA, logistics and much more. All of these are digitally enabled through tracking, claims assistance, enrollment, reporting and management among other facilities.

MBR: What are the strategic priorities of bimabd.com at the moment? How do you hope to scale up the business?

Bimabd.com: In case of retail market, we are reaching out to customers and trying to establish bimabd.com as their go-to insurance solutions provider where insurance is easy, fast and secure. We are continuously taking the feedbacks of customers with on-field and online surveys to provide solutions which a specific segment of population might need. The goal is to create a convenient solution for both insurance companies, corporates and consumers. We are working with a data driven capacity building as our number of retail customers are growing through multiple channels. Although it is a very emerging stage and we are working for it to be more robust in the coming days.
For corporate, currently we have 6 innovative products rolled out through multiple corporate partners. These are designed along with insurance companies and are aiming to set a standard of providing the fastest claim settlement. Moreover, we are also focusing on providing support for innovative product solutions to mitigate specific risks.
Apart from digitally enabling insurance, we are providing insurance companies a platform to provide customers service with ease; even amidst the pandemic.

MBR: Could you please give us an overview of bimabd.com in terms of services you offer, number of clients you have and the size of your business etc.?
Bimabd.com: Currently, we operate an online retail insurance marketplace which offers multiple retail products including: Motor, Travel, Health, Accidental and Life insurance. We also provide corporate solutions, digitally enabled services and new age products with express claims assistance.
Till now we have provided more than 250,000 micro insurances and retail policies. Moreover, we have been working with 25+ B2B partners.

MBR: What is the core competitive advantage of Bimabd.com? Why will the customers choose bimabd.com instead of other insurance companies?

Bimabd.com: Easy, fast and secure solutions. We are providing a variety of choices that one insurance company simply cannot provide. The user journey till now is the easiest in bimabd.com for customers and insurance underwriters in Bangladesh.

Apart from other benefits a platform can provide, we feel the customers want an easy journey with an easiness of retaining the policies and claiming if necessary.

MBR: What are the challenges bimabd.com is currently facing in general and how you are mitigating those?

Bimabd.com: There are multiple challenges; to list some of the major ones are, lack of good products, people’s stigma towards insurance services and systematic risks of the industry.
We are dealing with one problem at a time such as making new products, giving assisted solutions and diversifying our product portfolio. We are working with a goal to make lives easier and that helps motivating us to face the challenges.

MBR: What are the lessons you have learnt in terms of growing a business? What are the other future plans of bimabd.com?

Bimabd.com: The whole journey is a learning experience. However, the most significant changes occurred due to Covid-19. Before the pandemic, with multiple alternate distribution channels our business was growing smoothly and building capacity to meet market demand. The management of which changed post Covid and since then we are strictly developing a digital interaction-based insurance solution to adapt to these changes. We encountered a complete shift in usage of insurance in Bangladesh. Earlier, our management were a mixture of traditional and tech-based practices which changed dramatically. We shifted to newer product lines, it diversifies risks and also enables to penetrate new markets with existing resources. The plan in short is to make insurance easy for people and reach out to them through multiple channels so as to give them a good insurance experience. In the future, we also want to focus on precision insurance and building more sustainable models to mitigate risks.