On June 6th, 2018, RHB Insurance launched the “RHB Insurance Mobile App”. The Star published recently an article about the launch event in Kuala Lumpur with RHB Insurance Bhd managing director Kong Shu Yin. (RHB Insurance launches RHB Insurance Mobile App)
We are taking a close look to see what it has to offer. How does the mobile app compare to the other online insurance companies?
Testing RHB Insurance Mobile App
In our review, we tested the RHB Insurance mobile app on an iPhone 7. The app is quickly downloaded and greets us with a nice and sleek interface. The main option is to get a quick quote from the “Buy Now” button or “Read more” for more info. We decide to click on Read More first to understand what benefits the insurance offers.
What are the benefits?
Clicking on the “Read More” button we are shown a new page with a list of benefits that RHB Motor Insurance has to offer. Three points that stand out for us are “Towing”,  “Dedicated mobile app to do claims” and “Freedom to repair at your choice of workshop”.
Towing
The towing benefits are similar to what other insurance companies offer. Insurance companies try to be different with their towing limits. Some companies offer free km towing and others, like RHB Insurance offer a fixed amount. RHB Insurance offer free towing up to RM 300. We like companies that offer free towing in km better, because it is more transparent. A towing company can easily charge you RM 300 for a short distance, if they decide to do so. But if the insurance company pays on kilometer basis, then there is no argument on where to go. Kurnia’s auto365 offers 200km free towing, including toll charges. 200km is about the distance from KL to Ipoh, so plenty of towing distance. If you really need more, you can look into buying a separate insurance on top of any car insurance like the Allianz Enhanced Road Warrior. This extra cover offers unlimited towing.
Mobile App for claims submission
This sounded very promising to us. We tried to look for the feature, but only saw a page with a list of phone numbers to the emergency line or the customer support center. We did not see that promised support to help with the claims submission in the app. It might be that there is a separate mobile app to download, but then the question, why a separate app? It would just make things more complicated.
Freedom to repair at your choice of workshop
Freedom to choose your own workshop seems to be unique in Malaysia. We have not come across any other Malaysian insurance company that advertises this as a benefit. Most insurance companies will tell you to go to the nearest Panel workshop and do not recommend you to freely choose your own repair workshop. However, this freedom is only for OD-KFK, which according to the page means “Own Damage – Knock for Knock”. It also shows “Not policy-holder’s fault). This is definitely insurance language and not understandable for the average person on the street. So not really a benefit for us.
How easy is it to buy Private Car Insurance with RHB Insurance?Â
As a Malaysian, you only need to provide 4 information to find out how much your insurance is with RHB insurance.
- Your IC number
- Your marital status
- Your postcode
- Your vehicle number
Your birthday and your gender are automatically derived from the IC number. If you did not provide an IC number, then you would manually enter those two information.
Once all the information is provided, then the vehicle information are extracted from their database and presented to the user for double checking. We tried a few sample cases and it worked almost perfectly. A few times we had to type in the Vehicle Body Type, but in our case it was easy. All our cars were regular Saloon cars.
2018 Guide to Buy Car Insurance Online
To summarize, RHB Insurance mobile app offers one of the easier ways to find out how much the insurance cost for a car. It is not as easy as some of the insurance webpages like Etiqa, Takaful Malaysia or Tune, because you still need to download the app before you can get the price. However, once you have downloaded the app, it is much easier than insurance webpages like Liberty Insurance or Takaful Ikhlas.
Is RHB Insurance cheaper than other insurance companies?
We have randomly checked RHB insurance with some of the other insurance companies and found that RHB insurance is consistently more expensive than other insurance companies that sell insurance online.
RHB Insurance does not offer 10% online rebate
The main reason why RHB insurance is more expensive than other insurance companies is that RHB insurance does not give online rebate. In the below screenshot you can see the price of insurance for the same car. For example, Tune clearly shows that the customer receives 10% online rebate discount. On the other hand, RHB insurance does not give that discount to the customer. This makes RHB insurance automatically 10% more expensive than others.
For the below sample car, the price difference is huge. It is more than 30%, so that buying from Tune could save us RM 113.99.
Tune Insurance
RHB Insurance Mobile
Cheaper is not always Better!
We are not saying that Tune is the better insurance company or that cheaper insurance is better. We only state the fact that for the sample car, Tune would have saved us a lot of money. Given the choice, this money could be spend to get help from an insurance agent instead. For many Malaysian it can be better to buy car insurance through an insurance agent because an insurance agent will provide additional service and support especially during claims.
Our conclusion?
It is great that RHB offers now a new way for customers to buy Car Insurance through Mobile Apps in Malaysia. This really shows that the company is forward thinking and providing a new way to for Malaysian to buy insurance.
Unfortunately, the price that is offered through the mobile app does not have the best interest of the customer in mind. We do not see the customer getting the 10% direct discount. Other insurance companies like Etiqa, AmGeneral/Kurnia, Takaful Malaysia and many other insurance companies offer customers a 10% discount when they purchase insurance online without an insurance agent.
The benefits of offering car insurance through a mobile app are not there yet. It would have been great if one could simply submit a claim through the app, but this function does not exist. At the moment, we do not see the advantage of buying the insurance through the RHB insurance mobile app, when it is simpler to just go online to one of the 9 insurance companies and get a price quote form them.
RHB Insurance placed #14 out of 17 insurance companies in our 2017/2018 Motor Insurance Survey.
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