The rise of digitalization in every aspect of life has brought about changes in the way people live today. Paylater systems, for example, grew rapidly during the pandemic. In addition, it is alleged that public awareness of having life insurance during a pandemic is growing.
These facts prompted Dylan Arlen Tunggatama, Carissa Angelina Susanto, and Intan Juwitahari, students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia (FMIPA UI), to initiate a digital feature that can be utilized by e-commerce application users for paylater payment methods.
The feature is called SafeLater. “The concept of this feature is adopted from loan insurance in banks, which is an insurance product that provides guarantees to creditors in the event of a risk of default by the debtor, due to death or permanent total disability due to illness or accident,” said Dylan, head of the Bulbah Team – formed with two other colleagues. The team brought the idea to compete in the Cigna Innovation Challenge 2021, which was attended by 50 student teams from all over Indonesia.
The three students of the Actuarial Science Study Program, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia class of 2020 won the first prize. In the previous year (2020), a similar achievement was made by the A3 Team (Gracella Jovita and Justine Kael Tanady) from the same faculty.
PT Asuransi Cigna (a global healthcare company based in New York) as the event organizer, announced the winners of the competition at the Winner Announcement Ceremony held online on December 20, 2021. This competition was organized as a form of invitation to the young generation of Indonesia to provide ideas and innovations in the world of the insurance industry, which are in line with the times and technological changes that continue to occur.
There are three themes offered in this competition, namely programs to Improve the Financial Situation of Communities in Indonesia, Life Insurance Product Innovation according to your choice, and Building Attachments with Customers and Prospective Customers. The Bulbah team led by Dylan chose the theme “Life Insurance Product Innovation According to Your Choice”.
SafeLater allows app users to get a guarantee that the installments from the paylater or loan will be paid off, if the app user is unable to pay before the installments are paid off. This incapacity can be due to the death of the person concerned or a lifelong disability.
“The idea is that now there is such a thing as loan insurance at the bank. So, when someone borrows a certain amount of money, then the borrower dies, then the loan is guaranteed to be paid off. So, we take the idea from there, where we put this life insurance into the paylater (payment method),” said Intan, a member of the Bulbah team.
“The benefit of the SafeLater feature from the user’s point of view is the guarantee of repayment if there is a default condition. From the service provider side, it will increase user interest in buying products and transacting using the paylater system,” said Dylan.
Despite winning the first place title, there were challenges that the team had to face to achieve this. “The toughest challenge is when we have to determine the formulation and simulate the premium calculation that will be applied to users. Here we are really challenged to apply what we have learned in lectures, so that it can be realized in the industrial world. We had to (do) another literature study, and look for formulas to calculate the premium,” said Dylan.
Dean of Universitas Indonesia Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences(FMNS UI),Dede Djuhana, Ph.D., responded to the victory with pride and gratitude, especially because the Bulbah Team could defend the first Cigna permanent title at FMNS UI. “This achievement for us has proven that the innovation they initiated is quite relevant to the needs of insurance companies today,” said Dede.
He emphasized that actuarial science students must be able to solve theoretical and applied problems in actuarial science, and adapt to the development of actuarial science concepts in life insurance, general insurance and risk management. That way, they will be able to increase competitiveness at the regional level in accordance with the knowledge obtained from teachers and mentors on campus.
