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Top1. Introduction
Due to the explosive growth of Internet-based services, the experts are forecasting that significant change would take place the way product and services are sold in property & casualty Insurance (PCI) domain (Swiss Re, 2017).
However, the acceptability of web-based services as a selling platform has been significantly slower in the PCI domain (Tiwari, Patro, & Shaikh 2019). This problem is especially prominent in developing, and emerging countries where on the one hand PCI markets are poorly developed, and uncertainty is high. On the other hand, the adoption of information communication technology (ICT) enabled platforms in insurance domain is newer when compared to the developed nations (Tiwari et al., 2019; Tiwari & Patro, 2018). However, the economic relevance of ICT-enabled platforms has changed its relevance in these countries from a luxury good to utility good in almost all the domains. This widespread acceptability of ICT-enabled services, in turn, has compounded the network effect of ICT enabled platforms and thus made the adoption unavoidable in PCI domain (Swiss Re, 2017; Dash, Pradhan, Maradana, Gaurav, & Jayakumar, 2018). In the later half decade of 1990, the same situation was prevailing in developed countries. However, the current scenario of insurance industries in developing countries is far different from the scenario of developed countries. Insurers in developed countries are keen to develop robotic capabilities to sell complex products whereas the major focus of insurers and policymakers in developing countries is to develop and popularise microinsurance products among the vulnerable population. Hence, the appropriate strategy of ICT and mobile in PCI can make these markets fertile grounds for microinsurance products. Therefore, considering the importance of aspect, the current study has proposed to study the different role of risk aversion in the adoption of mobile and ICT platforms. This context is also important because recently there has been discussion in the PCI industry around the enormous potential benefits of data related capabilities (Catlin, Patiath, & Segev, 2014).
Despite the current wave of discussion for the ICT in the PCI sector, the extant literature on property-casualty insurance consumption has not given adequate attention to study the role of risk aversion. The few studies which have addresses IT related issues in PCI do not cover comparative role of channel adoption strategy (Fukuyama & Weber, 2001; Garven, 2002; Dumm & Hoyt, 2003; Chou, Liu, & Hammitt, 2004, Tiwari et al., 2019). Though Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (2000) have addressed this issue, they attributed the slow adoption of ICT-enabled platforms in the PCI industry to product complexity. Different from Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (2000), we study the context from the perspective of risk aversion that may help to design a channel strategy. Thus, this study fills the crucial gap in the existing literature.