Picture this: a customer in a Tier-3 town files a motor insurance claim through a chatbot. Instead of waiting days for manual assessment, an AI model verifies documents, auto-populates claim forms, and triggers settlement within minutes. The experience feels seamless — almost invisible — yet entirely transformative.
This is the frontier where India’s insurance sector stands today. As digital acceleration redefines business models, blending AI-first automation with human empathy has become non-negotiable. The nation’s march toward Viksit Bharat 2047 demands not just wider coverage but also smarter, more inclusive service designs.
To explore what this means for insurers, agents, and customers alike, CXQuest.com spoke with Ritesh Varma, Head of Business Consulting and Insurance Practice at Newgen Software, a global leader in digital transformation platforms integrating process automation, content services, and AI/ML capabilities. Over two decades, Ritesh has helped transition Newgen from an Indian software player into a global enterprise solutions innovator across BFSI, shared services, and workflow automation. His strategic focus on BPM, RPA, and analytics has shaped how financial institutions deliver efficiency and customer satisfaction in an AI-first era.
The Most Surprising CX Win in 2025
Q1. What customer experience (CX) win in 2025 surprised you the most, especially within India’s fast-evolving insurance landscape?
RV: Customer experience is directly responsible for persistency, and that realization has significantly improved speed of conversion in 2025. Insurers enabling portal-led journeys and complete web-based transactions are seeing faster closures and better retention. Additionally, the shift from basic chatbots to near-human conversational AI agents has transformed service interactions. These agentic experiences ensure continuity across onboarding, servicing, and claims, driving trust and long-term customer engagement.
Q2. How do Tier 2 and 3 cities represent untapped CX potential for insurers seeking inclusive digital growth?
RV: Mobile penetration in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities is phenomenal, making digital insurance highly accessible. However, increasing insurance awareness through vernacular promotions is essential. What truly unlocks CX potential is the ability to stick journeys from front end to back end. Agentic, low-code orchestration ensures that requests initiated via mobile or digital channels flow seamlessly through underwriting, servicing, and claims, without operational drop-offs or compromises.
Q3. What frameworks help balance speed, transparency, and trust when automating insurance claims with AI-first design?
RV: The balance is achieved through configuration-driven automation using low-code platforms and BPM. These frameworks enable insurers to orchestrate the entire claims journey end to end, ensuring speed without sacrificing control. Agentic AI supports intelligent triaging, clear audit trails, and explainable decisions, ensuring efficiency, audibility, and compliance are built into the process rather than treated as afterthoughts.
Foreseeing InsureTech Collaborations
Q4. How do you foresee InsurTech collaborations accelerating risk modeling and improving end-to-end customer journeys?
RV: India’s scale demands agility, and InsurTechs bring that speed by solving focused, high-impact problems. They help build an ecosystem with modular, problem-specific systems for risk, fraud, and analytics. With agentic orchestration, these components can be plugged into core journeys seamlessly. Increased digitization and modular adoption significantly improve speed of penetration, customer adoption, and overall journey consistency across the insurance lifecycle.
Q5. What strategies will ensure that digital automation supports—not replaces—human expertise in insurance ecosystems?
RV: The insurance industry is deeply rooted in Operations, making full automation neither practical nor desirable. True transformation lies in HI and AI working together. Agentic AI handles data-heavy, repetitive tasks, while humans focus on judgment-driven areas like underwriting (UW), quality control (QC), and claims fraud management. This human-in-the-loop approach enhances accuracy, compliance, and customer trust while preserving expert oversight.
Q6. How can insurers reconcile the traditional “CX vs. cost” conflict in AI-orchestrated service models?
RV: Insurers must look beyond short-term cost pressures and focus on the long-term value of AI and HI working together. Agentic customer service reduces costs through automation, straight-through processing, and faster resolution, while simultaneously improving CX. Over time, gains in productivity, reduced leakage, and higher retention demonstrate that improved experience and cost efficiency can scale together, not compete.
Which KPIs or Metrics?
Q7. Which KPIs or metrics best demonstrate that agentic AI truly scales ROI and customer lifetime value in BFSI?
RV: The most effective KPIs are Persistency, Compliance, Efficiency, and Leakages. Persistency reflects CX quality and trust, compliance ensures auditability, efficiency captures operational improvement, and reduced leakage demonstrates stronger fraud and risk management. Together, these indicators validate that agentic AI delivers sustainable ROI while improving customer lifetime value across BFSI journeys.
Q8. What does a future-ready insurance workplace look like when AI-driven learning and belonging coexist?
RV: A future-ready workplace is where AI works in tandem with human intelligence (HI) and operations shift toward experience-led models. Agentic tools augment employees with insights and learning, while digital channels expand penetration into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. With Gen Z embracing direct-to-customer models, insurers must create workplaces that blend automation, inclusion, continuous learning, and purpose-driven engagement.
Viksit Bharat 2047
As India advances toward Viksit Bharat 2047, Ritesh Varma’s perspective underscores a crucial truth: the success of digital transformation lies not in technology adoption, but in human-centric orchestration. AI-first automation can deliver unprecedented speed and consistency, yet trust and transparency remain its defining differentiators.
The insurance frontier, particularly in Tier 2 and 3 towns, will not be about competition but collaboration between insurers, InsurTech innovators, and digital leaders like Newgen. Together, they can build an inclusive and frictionless ecosystem where innovation safeguards financial security for every citizen.
For readers exploring similar insights, visit our [AI in CX Hub], [Financial Services CX trends], and [Digital Experience Transformation Series] on CXQuest.com.
→ What’s your view? How do you see AI shaping inclusion and trust across CX-driven industries by 2047? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.
