United India Opens Personal Cell In Nagpur

Public sector general insurance major United India Insurance Company Ltd on Monday opened its 'personal line insurance cell' in Nagpur.

The company also announced its plans to open 100 similar facilities in the country within the financial year to form the basic infrastructure for its planned subsidiary company.

C Sarabhayya, all-India general manager (marketing), United Insurance, said that the company had identified the 100 offices to be converted into dedicated personal line insurance cells.

"We also intend to open micro offices which are basically one-person centres in places with population up to or just over 50,000 so as to improve our penetration levels," he said.

According to Sarabhayya, a study sponsored by United India had indicated that there was premiums worth Rs 30,000 crore lying untapped in the personal insurance business.

"We are already doing business worth Rs 200 crore in personal line products and expect to more than double it by the end of the financial year," he said.

He said the personal line insurance cells will be given a target of Rs 2 crore each in the first year of their formation.

He said United Insurance continued to be the market leader in the general insurance sector in the country excluding Mumbai, and had clocked a premium collection of Rs 2,672 crore in 2001-02.

"Our target was Rs 2,650 crore and we overachieved it by around nine per cent," he said. The insurance officer said that the company showed an accretion of Rs 200 crore in the last fiscal.

"We are now targetting a growth of 12 per cent in premium collections at Rs 2850 crore, but should easily cross this target," he said.

The Chennai-headquartered company has 1,100 operational units in the country managed through 24 regional offices.

"All the units are fully computerised and we are about to start working on providing wide area networking facility," Sarabhayya said.

The personal line insurance business includes products aimed at households, personal accident policies, mediclaim, janta personal accident policy, various policies for rural India and education policies.