Aditya Birla Health Insurance to expand branch network

Standalone health insurer Aditya Birla Health Insurance Company Ltd plans to expand its branch network to 100 in a couple of years while hoping to break even in six years of operation, said a top company official on Wednesday.

"We are now present in 34 cities. In a couple of years' time, we will take our number of branches to 100," Mayank Bathwal, Chief Executive Officer, told reporters here.

According to him, the one-year-old company is expected to break even at the end of six years of operation.

The health insurer is a joint venture between MMI Strategic Investments (Pty) Ltd, MMI Holdings Ltd, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd and Aditya Birla Capital Ltd.

Bathwal said during the first half of the current fiscal, the company has booked a gross premium income of Rs 96.2 crore while declining to share the premium target for the full year.

According to Bathwal, the company has its own claims settling team for individual policies, while in the case of group policies taken by corporates, third party administrator (TPA) or a claims processing agency will process the claim.

He said a major portion of the total business is from individual agency channel and the balance is from bancassurance, brokers and online channels.

Queried about fraudulent claims, Bathwal said the company has mapped certain geographies in the country where fraudulent claims are possibilities.

He said a trigger will be raised when a policy from certain pin codes is underwritten. The company will do a careful underwriting of policies from those pin code areas.

--IANS

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