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Interview of Mr. V Ramakrishna ,
MD of India Insure
(Date: 9th January 2006)
How would you differentiate ‘India Insure’ from
other broking companies?
‘India Insure’ is the first broking insurance company to
get the license in India. We are the only Indian broking
house, which has over eight branches across the country.
We have more than 100 employees, who cater to over 250 customers
spread across the country. Another distinguishing feature
is that we cater only to corporate clients. We do not attend
to individuals or retail customers. No broking company has
carved out a niche approach like us of attending only to
corporate clients. We have a full-fledged service model
offering wherein right from the moment a client picks up
the policy till the renewal process, we hold ourselves responsible
for the complete policy service.
Which insurance companies do you mostly deal with?
We deal with both public and private sector. From the business
distribution perspective 60% goes to the government companies
and 40% goes to the private sector. We are not aligned to
a particular insurance company as we deal with all the players
in the market. We are completely neutral in our approach,
as we work in tandem with our customers.
What is your view on the 5% special discount offered
to the corporate clients directly by the insurance companies?
Do you see this act to change in the future?
I do not see any change in this act until the non-life
tariff is removed. The Insurance Regulatory and Development
Authority has come up with a roadmap of phasing out of tariffs
as far as the fire and engineering insurance are concerned
which is likely to come into effect by December 2006. It
is only after detariffing, this act has a chance of disappearing
otherwise the practice will continue as it has been in the
past.
How will the company meet the growing needs of
its client’s?
We follow a very unique business model. Our company is
divided into two categories, each performing a different
service. The first one is Business Development Team whose
responsibility is to get new customers on board and the
second team is Customer Service Team. Employees with domain
knowledge and experience cater to the needs of the clients
throughout the year. It is our top priority to give full-fledged
attention to our customers.
Besides this, we have web-enabled service which completely
tracks the clients’ portfolios such as renewal dates, year
of the claims, the status of the client’s premium completion.
The clients have a complete access to the web and can view
any detail at any point of time.
What is the average time involved in settlement
of claims?
For a health claim of a routine corporate employee the average
time involved is 7-15 days whereas the turn around time
for a fire or marine claim is 45-90 days depending on how
well prepared the customer is with his policy documentation.
What impact do you see once the non life insurance
gets detariffed?
The competition is going to intensify much more. It is
going to be an aggressive market, as each one of them would
try their best to get a large piece in the market share.
The customer will be at an advantage with each of the competitor
giving them a royal treatment. There will be a substantial
reduction in the premium that is currently being paid in
the insurance market. In all of this, the client will benefit.
After the floods in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, what
has been the ratio of claims received?
The claims have gone up phenomenally after the occurrence
of the floods. However, it is important to note that the
insurers do not view flood claims adversely since it is
considered to be an act of God. Moreover it is a rare event,
which may occur once in many years hence the insurers are
not very perturbed about it. And most of them have reinsurance
protection in place to take care of such events. Hence the
loss gets minimized and spread out.
How do you perceive the insurance industry in the
next five years?
Life insurance is growing aggressively and it will continue
to grow as a large Indian population is underinsured. This
shows that there is a tremendous upside available in the
life insurance industry. I perceive a good growth happening
in the market space. A lot of companies have entered the
insurance sector and one might witness a few more new entrants
in the insurance arena. There is a large market for every
insurer and moreover awareness of insurance is also growing.
The uninsured population potrays a greater business opportunity.
What are your futures plans? What kind of strategies
do you adopt to serve the clients?
We have built our company aggressively over the last 3
years since we got the license, hence there would be a consolidation
phase for a year or so where we will gear up our internal
system, service standards to provide enhanced services to
our clients before we embark on the next level of expansion.
We do plan to reach out to the smaller towns across the
country (non metros).
We are also planning to get into reinsurance. We have already
applied to IRDA for the reinsurance licence as there is
a huge demand from our clients for reinsurance products.
So instead of relying on other source we can do the same
and leverage it. Secondly in a detariffed situation, one
needs to build customized polices. Again the need of reinsurance
would arise hence it makes logical sense for us to move
into reinsurance. We would also want to maintain the current
position we have in the market.
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