Factors Affecting Policyholders’ Satisfaction towards Life Insurance: An Empirical Study on Life Insurance Policyholders in Bangladesh

Insurance represents a very important tool to minimize risks borne by people and businesses in trendy economies. It’s nothing but a mechanism of spreading the chance of one to the shoulders of the many. Insurance is one vital segments of monetary system. The insurance business is exclusive within the sense that it's rewarded for managing the chance of alternative parties. Human life is the most precious thing and life insurance is the most significant form of insurance that provides monetary protection to individuals and their families at the time of unsure risks or injury. Although life can’t indemnify, life insurance provides a way of security, safety and protection to people and conjointly encourages savings among folks. This study aims to behold the factors affecting policyholders’ satisfaction towards life insurance policies in Bangladesh which will help insurance companies to develop strategies to grow and sustain the life insurance business. The study is descriptive in nature, has been conducted supported both primary and secondary data. Twelve (12) variables have identified in this respect and hundred (100) policyholders are selected randomly from different locality. Collected data have tested with the help of various statistical tools like reliability and validity checking, regression analysis, ANOVA, weighted average method and hypothesis testing. The analyzed data has been presented in the form of table, graphs and charts. The study suggested that mass communication helps to form awareness and trust among the people with reference to taking associate degree contract strategy. The study concluded that low premium, service quality, efficient agent, trust, technology and communication are the most significant motivating factors compared to product feature, price, flexibility, brand value, economic growth and maturity benefits on policyholders` satisfaction. This study can become useful for the advance of insurance in Bangladesh. Keywords— Bangladesh, Life-insurance, Policyholders` satisfaction, Service quality, Trust.


INTRODUCTION
Insurance could be a contract, diagrammatical by a policy, within which a private or entity receives monetary protection or compensation against losses from associate degree no depository financial institution. Insurance is a very important risk mitigation device. It provides a way of security. Insurance works on the principle of pooling of risks and distributes risks over many folks. Insurance is a useful aid to trade. Insurance is one vital segments of monetary system. The insurance business is exclusive within the sense that it's rewarded for managing the chance of alternative parties.
Insurance sector in Bangladesh emerged after independence with 2 nationalized insurance companies-1 Life & 1 General; and 1 foreign insurance company. In mid 80s, private sector insurance companies started to enter in the industry and it got expanded. Now days, 62 companies are operating under Insurance Act 2010. Out of them-18 are Life Insurance Companies including 1 foreign company and 1 is state-owned company, 44 General Insurance Companies including 1 state-owned company. Insurance companies in Bangladesh provide following services: Life insurance, General Insurance, Reinsurance, Micro-insurance, and Takaful or Islami insurance.
Although Bangladesh's insurance sector has witnessed some growth, as compared with alternative rising nations, there's loads of area for improvement. According  However, with the recent increase in life expectancy, around 20 per cent of the population will be older people (65 years and beyond). From an economic perspective, a growing senior population will mean reallocating economic and other resources. Bangladesh is yet to establish a sustainable social security program for the elderly people. Except for the government service-holders and few other social safety net programs, the country does not have massive coverage of social security services. In this context, insurance is such an industry that has the capability of complementing the government programs for ensuring sustainable development.

II. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main purpose of this research is to explore the policyholders` satisfaction level regarding life insurance which will help insurance companies to develop strategies to grow and sustain in the life insurance business. Some other objectives arei. to find out the impact of service quality on policyholders' satisfaction.

IV. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Customers were the main pillars of any business and customer service is the critical success factor in a company and providing outstanding customer service differentiates great customer service from indifferent customer service. Customers today are more demanding and expecting high standards of service and value satisfaction. If all the players in the life insurance industry focus on the effective delivery of services they could win the hearts of customers and anticipate their increased market share. Customer service assumes vital importance in the marketing programs of all modern organizations including service organizations. Insurance companies need to improve its service quality to meet changing demands and expectations of customers. ). Frank and Enkawa examined the impact of economic growth and economic expectation that influence the customer satisfaction and their quality. They found that policyholders are positively influenced towards economic growth and negatively influenced towards their economic expectation and also found that economic expectation and quality expectations are positively correlated. (Frank & Enkawa, 2009). An article titled, "Policyholders Satisfaction with the Agency-Based Sales Surpasses Satisfaction with Direct Sales in Japan", reveals that policyholders are more satisfied with timely services, procedure and documentation followed, low premium and innovative products offered by the Prudential Life Insurance Company. (J, 2011). in their article Anshuja Tiwari and Babita Yadav reveal that prompt customer service, after-sales services, innovative products with flexibility and better communication influences the customer satisfaction towards private life insurers than public sector insurer, LIC. (Tiwari & Yadav, 2012). Deepika Upadhyaya and Manish Badlani carried out a study entitled, "Service Quality Perception and Customer Satisfaction in Life Insurance Companies in India", with a view to identify customer satisfaction in retail life insurance in India. They identify that the policyholders are more satisfied with the pricing factor followed by employee competence, product and service, technology, physical ambience of the company, trust, service delivery, advertising and service management. Goswami carried out a study to identify the dimensions of service quality that ensures maximum satisfaction for the customers in the life insurance industry. She finds that customers are more satisfied with responsiveness dimension of service quality namely, promptness and timeliness in service as well as willingness to help the customers. The insurance companies have to work and concentrate on time-based competition, quality, product range, timely advertisement, follow up, prompt and errorfree services which are the key ingredients for the better service and it will boost up the sales. (Goswami, 2007). Upadhyaya (2011) finds out the factors of customer satisfaction in life insurance and study the importance technology in full fling customer satisfaction. Study highlights the role of technology to improve quality and customer satisfaction. Researcher finding the majority of policyholders who are strongly recognizable with interpersonal services may never be satisfied with technology-based service. Siddiqui and Sharma investigate service quality framework for life insurance and then relative importance of these service quality dimensions from customer's viewpoint. The paper attempt to measure as to how well services are being delivered i.e., up-to what level performances are meeting the expectations. The result tinted the main concern areas of service instrument with assurance is the best interpreter, followed by competence and personalized financial planning. The insurance companies have to work and concentrate on time-based competition, quality, product range, timely advertisement, follow up, prompt and error-free services which are the key ingredients for the better service and it will boost up the sales. (Siddiqui & Sharma, 2010). Policyholders of life insurance policies seek personalized services and constant support in financial planning e.g., flexible payment schedule, flexible product solution, provisions for convertibility of products and supplementary services etc. So, service providers should encourage the agents to assume wider roles, that of financial consultants. (Subashini & Velmurugan, 2016). In his study (sinha, 2013) stated that insurance companies are working in a highly competitive market where consumers have many companies and products to choose from. Hence it becomes necessary for insurance companies to maintain loyal customer base by increasing customer loyalty through improved service quality. His study given by factor analysis is performed where five factors are derived namely, sincere and prompt services, comparison and courteous, meticulous and customers orientation, flexibility and tangibility. The study emphasizes that the customers should be given prompt service. They should feel safe in their dealings with the company and the company should give individual attention to the customer. Manuel conducted the study to understand the Consumer Perception about life insurance policies. The survey was conducted to find out the attributes which affect decision making of consumers of life insurance policies which are return on investment, company reputation, premium outflow, service quality and product quality (Manuel, 2013). Yadav and Tiwari find out factors influencing customer investment decision, impact of various demographic factors, preferences of customers while taking the decision, and ranking of factors responsible for the selection life insurance as an investment option. The features that policyholders consider while making a purchase can be ranked as follows: company reputation, money back guarantee, risk coverage, low premium and easy access to agents as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively. Thus, it could be concluded that goodwill of the company is the most influencing factor while policy buying decision. It was found that majority of respondents preferred money back policy. (Tiwari & Yadav, 2012).
Kaur and Negi conducted their study in Chandigarh and by using factor analysis they found customized and timely service, brand value, considerate employee, price immunity as major factors affecting the satisfaction of customers. They even found that maximum life covered under insurance are of male than female and satisfaction level among public and private sector insurance companies is same. (Negi & Kaur, 2010

V. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY
Research methodology is the specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select, process, and analyze information about a topic. In a research paper, the methodology section allows the reader to critically evaluate a study's overall validity and reliability (David Wilkinson, 2020

Demographic Analysis
The demographic analysis of the respondent represent that the majority of the respondents are of the age between 45-54 years, most of them are male respondent and they are married, their educational level is graduation and majority of them are government job holders. www.ijaems.com

Reliability and Validity of data
Reliability refers to the consistency of set of items in measuring the study variables (Cooper & Schinder, 2001). Cronbach's alpha is commonly used method to measure the reliability or internal consistency that is, how closely related a set of items are as a group (Cooper & Schinder, 2001). The satisfactory value in Cronbach's alpha is required to be more than 0.60 to be reliable (Malhotra, 2002). In this study, Cronbach's alpha is .786 (Table-2), which indicates a satisfactory level of internal consistency for the scale.

Regression Analysis 6.3.1 Model Summary
The value of R Square (0.741) and R (0.835) shows that there is strong association between the set of independent variables and the dependent variable with the standard error of 0.410 (Table-4) .In additions, the Table-3 implies that the policyholder`s satisfaction towards life insurance policies in Bangladesh is 74% dependent on service quality, product features, pricing factors, flexibility, trust, agents, communication, uses of technology, premium, brand value, economic growth and maturity benefits. The rest 26% is dependent on some others factors that are not considered by the researcher in this study.

ANOVA test
The F value of the test for the data is 38.542. The p-value associated with this F value which is .000 which is lower than the alpha value 0.05 (Table-4). In additions, The Table-4 implies that there is significant influence of these independent variables on the dependent variable and the model applied is significantly good to predict the dependent variable.

Regression Coefficients
In Table 5, Since the beta values are the standardized versions of the b-values and are directly comparable, these values may be used to infer regarding the relative importance of each predictor or independent variables to the model. In other words, the beta coefficients could be used to explain the relative importance of the 8 dimensions or factors (V1 to V12 i.e., independent variables) in contributing to the variance in the factors affecting policyholder`s satisfaction towards life insurance policies in Bangladesh.  In this regard, from the t-values it can be also concluded that v9 has a greater impact on the outcome than v1, v8, v7, v6, v4, v3, v10, v11, v12, v5, and v2.
In summary, it can be stated that all underlying dimensions are positive and therefore are significant. Thus, the result of multiple regression analysis rejects all of the null hypothesis (H01-H05) and proves or accepts the alternative hypothesis (Ha1-Ha5). So, there is a relationship as expected.
So, the regression model achieved a satisfactory level of goodness-of-fit in predicting the variance of policyholder`s satisfaction in relation to the 12 predictors or independent variables, as measured by the above-mentioned R, R2, Adjusted R2, F ratio, beta and t values. In other words, at least one of the 12 predictors or independent variables of the model is important in affecting the policyholder`s satisfaction towards life insurance policies in Bangladesh.

VII. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The findings of the study reviles that some independent variables have greater impact on policyholder's satisfaction compared to other variables. When prospective policyholders decide to choose a particular policy from a particular insurance company, they appreciate low premium, services quality of the company, insurance agents, trust on the company and use of technology in service delivery system. There are some other factors like communication between company and client before and after the policy purchase, product features, flexibility in payment and documentation system, brand value of the company in the market, product pricing, and maturity benefit received after the policy maturity and economic growth form the policy. From the demographic analysis it is clear that most of the policyholders are male and they are from the age group of 45-54 years. Although now-adays female have a greater participation in economic activities but there is a smaller number of female policyholders compared to male policyholder. From the above findings it can be recommended that amount and number of premium need to be carefully set, service quality need to be maintained, companies should recruit qualified and efficient agents so that they can rise trust among the people. Technology is a useful tool to communicate with the prospective and existing customers as companies can easily inform about the updates regarding product, price and it can also be used as a promotional tool. Companies should focus on their brand values as a strong brand value increases trust among customers. Overall, insurance companies need to be developed proper and competitive strategies to attract more and more customers and to sustain in the competitive market.

VIII. CONCLUSION
This is the law of nature that human have to be compelled to live and play with hazards and to some extent insurance will free from those frustrations. Insurance firms play a very important role within the welfare of. human wellbeing by providing protection to uncountable folks against life risks like unsure death or accident Customers have specific opinions on their purchase or consumption expertise from a product or service. A growing life insurance industry that complements a country's sustainable economic development strategy creates the financial support to manage the risk of dying early or living too long (Blake, Cairns, Coughlan, Dowd, & MacMinn, 2013; Smith, 2014 ). Life insurance practitioners need to identify strategies to enhance the life insurance pool and support the sustainability of the business (Kramaric & Galetic, 2013). These strategies might aid insurance practitioners to develop appropriate insurance products and services accessible to the uninsured population in Bangladesh.