Niva Bupa's Nimish Agrawal on Why Health Insurance Must Stop Selling Fear
Health insurers have spent decades persuading Indians to insure their health. Awareness has climbed, the advertising has grown more sophisticated, and comparison has never been easier. Penetration has stayed stubbornly low. For Nimish Agrawal, Director of Digital Business and Chief Marketing Officer at Niva Bupa Health Insurance, the reason is not price and not awareness. It is relevance.
- Speaking: Nimish Agrawal, Director, Digital Business and CMO, Niva Bupa Health Insurance
- Core argument: low purchase despite high awareness is a relevance problem, not an affordability one
- On fear-led advertising: effective for immediate action, of limited value for a long-term commitment
- Proposed shift: from protection against a distant emergency to a product delivering value across a person's health journey
The Urgency Problem
Agrawal's diagnosis is that the category has been solving the wrong problem. He says one of the biggest reasons for low health insurance purchase, despite high awareness, is a lack of relevance, and that people believe they can buy it later, so the sense of urgency remains missing.
On cost, he is direct that it is rarely the primary hurdle. In an era of instant gratification, he argues, consumers struggle to justify paying for something whose benefits feel too far removed from everyday life.
That reframing has consequences for how the category should be measured. If the barrier were price, the answer would be cheaper products and better EMI options. If the barrier is perceived distance between payment and benefit, the answer is a different product design, not a different price point.
Why Fear Stops Working
Insurance advertising has leaned on medical emergencies, unexpected hospital bills and worst-case scenarios for as long as the category has advertised. Agrawal's objection is structural rather than moral.
Fear works well, he says, if you want someone to do something immediately, but health insurance is not a short-term purchase. It is about long-term commitment.
That is a sharper point than the familiar complaint that fear-based advertising is distasteful. A tactic calibrated for immediate action is simply mismatched to a product that has to be renewed year after year, often for decades, with no visible benefit in most of those years. The emotion that closes the first sale is not the emotion that sustains a twenty-year relationship.
His alternative is to make insurance part of a person's everyday health journey rather than a hedge against a distant catastrophe, which is a product argument as much as a communications one.
It is also, notably, a CMO arguing that his category's most reliable advertising device should be retired.
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