Wharton_Consulting_Club_Casebook_2017.pdf

CASE 12
Insurance for the Underserved in India
Level of Difficulty: Hard
Case Similar to Cases at Firms: More like a McKinsey case
Topics Tested: Mathematical calculation, marketing brainstorm, market sizing, etc.
Prompt: The Indian insurance market is heavily underpenetrated. The majority of insurable, adult population either is not
insured and this has serious consequences – when financial adversity strikes, such as when the main breadwinner of a
family dies, or if there is a drought or a flood, people either find it hard to survive or in some cases also commit suicide.
When we say insurance, we think of both life insurance and non-life insurance such as health, crop, etc. The distinction is
not important for the purposes of our case.
The government of India is thinking of using the Indian postal network as a creative way of reaching the underserved insurance
population. The infrastructure already exists and this can be leveraged for distributing much-needed insurance products. The
objective would be to provide a safety net to as many people as possible in the underserved markets. To answer this case, the
interviewer should ask the following questions (sequentially and as they come out in conversation)
Q1: [Brainstorming]: what considerations should the government think about?
Q2: [Market sizing]: how do we define underserved and what’s the size of the insurance market?
Q3: [Indian Postal Network Penetration]: what percent of the overall market can the Indian Postal Network cover?
Q4: [Profitability]: how much money will the postal network make in the first year of launch?
Q5: [Brainstorming]: given the economics, should the government pursue with the insurance through Indian postal network?
How can it improve the profitability?
KNOWLEDGE FOR ACTION
Wharton Casebook 2017
132