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Public sector general insurer New India Assurance posted net profit of Rs 644 crore for the April to September period, which tripled compared to Rs 205 crore in same period last year. In an interview with M Saraswathy, G Srinivasan, the chairman and managing director of the company, talks about growth strategies. Excerpts:
New India has set a target of Rs 15,000 crore global premium. Is the company close to achieving this premium?
In the last financial year, the company collected total premium of Rs 12,500 crore. This included Rs 10,000 crore premium from India and Rs 2,500 crore from overseas.
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This year, the target is to achieve Rs 12,000 crore from India and Rs 3,000 crore from overseas. We have already collected Rs 7,000 crore global premium in first half of the fiscal. In Indian operations, there is a slight slowdown in the market. Presently, our growth is on par with market. However, we believe that New India will increase its market share this year.
I am hopeful that we would achieve our targets, even though it is a challenging market. In terms of the different segments, retail has driven our growth, specially areas like motor, marine hull and miscellaneous lines.
Some natural calamities have occurred this year. Will these increase your losses?
The cyclones in the East Coast have been disturbing the current year. Fortunately, they have been benign from general insurance perspective, except agriculture insurance. In Orissa, we had about Rs 35 crore loss. This year, the Uttarakhand calamity has been a big area in terms of losses for the industry. We had Rs 186 crore loss. Further, the floods in Gujarat also accounted for Rs 40 crore loss for us.
By the end of this fiscal, we will see a drop in incurred claims ratio, management expenses and reduction in underwriting losses and combined ratio, whereas the investment income will go up.
You as an insurer have recently introduced policies for the lower income group. When will it be available in the retail market?
We thought that we would experiment with it for four months and then take it to the retail market. Any individual needs a health cover, accident cover and property cover. We wanted to start with the low income group and then build it for different segments. When we come into the retail market, we wish to have three different segments of the product, low income, lower middle class and upper middle class.
The company has undertaken a plan to work with corporate customers to increase business growth. Will this continue?
We are working with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and also with Institute Of Company Secretaries Of India for providing insurance products to its members. We are also talking to the Institute of Cost Accountants of India for a similar project.
New India and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) entered into an MoU to provide a package of three policies to registered transporting contractors of the Oil Industry major. We have Business-to-Business (B2B) relationships with portals. Once we establish portals and give it to these customers, they can take policies in a hassle free manner. We are planning to do lot more in this segment.
New India had earlier planned to enter three markets abroad. Has the process been finalised?
We had planned to enter Myanmar, Canada and Qatar. In Myanmar, we have got the approval from Government of India. Now we need approval from the Myanmar regulator. That should happen in 2-3 months. For Qatar and Canada, we are waiting for approval from Indian government. This we expect shortly.
The finance minister had asked state-owned insurers to open up micro-offices in rural areas and settle claims through Lok Adalats. Have those norms been met?
We will have 1,000 micro offices by end of the fiscal. We already have opened up 700 offices and will open 300 more. This target will be completed by February itself. Through the Lok Adalats, a total of 12,500 motor claims cases were settled, totalling to Rs 205 crore.
