Bharti Axa General may infuse Rs 120-cr in FY10

Bharti Axa General Insurance Company, which began its operations seven months ago, is planning to infuse an additional capital of Rs 120 crore in 2009-10.

S Narayanmurthy, senior vice-president (underwriting and product development), Bharti Axa General Insurance, said the company’s current capital position is Rs 190 crore, while an additional capital of around Rs 120 crore will be infused by the joint venture partners in this financial year.

“Our promoters will definitely infuse the additional capital if needed for solvency margin requirements,” he added.

The private sector company, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and the UK-based Axa has collected a premium of around Rs 29 crore from September 2008 to March 31, 2009.

The proposed capital infusion would help the company upgrade IT systems and also to expand to Tier-II cities and towns. Currently, the private sector insurer has 30 branches across the country. By the year-end, the company would increase the number of its branches to 80 and employ 1,500 people, he added.

Meanwhile, the company has obtained approvals from the regulators for more than 35 products, said Narayanmurthy.

“We need to re-orient our strategy towards untapped potential. While efforts to get into the traditional business of property, engineering are in progress, we would be planning to concentrate on retail, rural and health insurance segments as well as new products.” 

In the property segment, the company would concentrate on the small and medium enterprises segment through which we will be able to retain more of our business achieving a widespread coverage, he added.

Commenting about the current slowdown, Narayanmurthy said the recessionary trend is slowly fading away and that the economy has improved.

“We are expecting the industry to grow in the normal 10-12 per cent in 2009-10, with major contributions from motor, health and project insurance segments.”