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n addition to recruiting new agents, Sequis Life and FWD Life recently launched mobile applications to boost their new-premium income.

Sequis Life president director Tatang Widjaja said the company'€™s newest mobile app, '€˜Sequis Ez'€™, for agents and revamped site '€œSequis Online'€ for customers were part of its efforts to increase gross premium income by 14 percent this year after increasing by 12 percent last year.

'€œ[The system] will assist us in managing and monitoring our agencies'€™ performance, boosting operational efficiency and burnishing the firm'€™s image especially to attract the younger generation as active tech users,'€ he said at the launch of the app and new site in Jakarta recently.

Tatang said the firm spent between Rp 100 billion (US$7.2 billion) and Rp 150 billion each year to develop its IT system.

'€˜Sequis Ez'€™ can be downloaded by agents as a tool to display real-time forms and guidelines to help them promote unit-linked and traditional products and close deals with potential customers. The app captures physical documents and validates purchases.

'€œWe now have 14,000 agents and are aspiring to recruit 2,000 more this year,'€ he said.

'€˜Sequis Online'€™, meanwhile, was the company'€™s website from which customers could purchase traditional products with monthly premiums starting from as little as Rp 33,000, Tatang added.

'€œThe site is part of our efforts to boost sales through micro customers. Only 2.51 percent of the country'€™s 250 million people have purchased insurance products. It means there are more than 100 million potential customers. We want to get this bulk first before enlarging the figure,'€ he explained.

The number of internet users in Indonesia jumped 20.5 percent in 2014 to 88.1 million people. The number of smartphone users is predicted to hit 103.6 million in 2017 from around 61.2 million in 2014.

According to unaudited 2015 year-end financial report, Sequis Life booked total gross premium income of Rp 2.89 trillion, a 12 percent increase year-on-year (yoy). Total assets went up 1 percent to Rp 15.3 trillion and profits up 38 percent to Rp 735 billion.

At the same time, it paid out claims worth Rp 136 billion and $432,650. The company has around 400,000 policy holders. It aims to see its gross premium income increase by 14 percent this year to more than Rp 3 trillion.

According to the Indonesian Life Insurance Association (AAJI), the industry'€™s total premium income rose by 16 percent to Rp 100.8 trillion as of September last year.

Besides Sequis Life, other life insurance firms have also adopted digital sales as their business strategy.

FWD Life, for example, has been using the FWD Life mobile app for its agents and customers to sell and buy products, since its first operation in 2014. The company recently launched another app, FWD Digital Agency for its agents to help them recruit other agents in a paperless and faster way.

FWD Life vice president director Jens Reich said that with the app, the firm hoped to double its number of agents from 2,500 to 5,000 this year. It also expects to have 1 million policy holders by 2017 from 26,000 currently.

Besides launching the app, the firm is also partnering with 62 Excelso Cafe branches to provide meeting points for various promotions for its agents and customers. (rbk)