by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate finance, Finance, News
Mumbai : Private life and non-life insurers – Bharti AXA Life Insurance and Bharti AXA General Insurance – on Monday announced a simplified claims procedure for flood victims of Kerala and Karnataka.
In a joint statement issued here Bharti AXA Life Insurance said it has simplified the claim processing for the flood victims of Kerala and Karnataka in three steps – written intimation from the nominee along with cancelled cheque of the nominee’s bank account; death certificate from any authorised hospital or police or armed forces; and Aadhar card of the nominee.
“In view of the deluged-ravaged Kerala and some districts of Karnataka and resultant loss of lives, we have set up a dedicated assistance cell at each district in Kerala and the flood-hit districts of Karnataka for simplified life claims with minimal documents.
We understand the plight of our customers and endeavour to settle eligible claims expeditiously. If death certificate is not available, we shall accept a certificate from police, armed forces or any authorised hospital certifying the death of the life insured,” Vikas Seth, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA Life was quoted as saying in the statement.
The company has also extended the existing grace period of 15 days or 30 days as applicable to 60 days for payment of premiums due during the period from 15th July 2018 to 30th September 2018 and waived off late or penalty fees on such due premium.
Similarly, Bharti AXA General Insurance has formed help desks to support and guide its customers and instructed its nodal officers and branches in Kochi, Trivandrum, Thrissur, Kotayam and Calicut to fast-track claim settlement processes in the flood-devastated Kerala and the flood-hit districts of Karnataka.
“We have introduced documentation waivers in support of motor claims. Survey has been waived for minor losses, if the insured is able to share the photographs through digital media. On basis of that, remote survey will be conducted and claim shall be processed.
No insistence on Registration Certificate, if it has been lost in flood and the claim shall be processed based on the soft copy available in the online portal,” Sanjeev Srinivasan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA General Insurance, was quoted in the statement.
Bharti AXA General Insurance has waived monetary claim letter, damage certificate and letter of subrogation for claims up to Rs 1 lakh.
The company has also decided to skip estimate of loss for completely submerged vehicles in Kerala and Karnataka floods and expedite claim settlement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Investing, Medium Enterprise
Chennai : Private non-life insurer Liberty General Insurance Limited hopes to close this fiscal with a health insurance premium of Rs 150 crore and is confident that its in-house processing of health claims would provide its policy holders superior service, said a top company official.
“Our health insurance business is growing well. We hope to close this fiscal with a premium of Rs 150 crore up from Rs 119 crore earned during 2017-18,” Roopam Asthana, CEO and Whole Time Director told IANS.
He said the company will start processing the claims under its group health insurance policies in-house in three months time while the process of individual/retail health insurance claims has already begun.
Till now the company had outsourced the health insurance claims to a Third Party Administrator (TPA)/health insurance claims processing agency.
“One of the key issues in the insurance business is offering good experience to the policy holders at the time he makes a claim. In the case of a TPA it is not possible for an insurer to ensure the turnaround time promised to the policy holder each and every time,” Asthana said.
“The other problem with the TPAs is that they don’t have dedicated teams to handle claims of different insurers. As a result, a TPA official may not be aware of the entire policy conditions of each and every insurer,” he added.
According to him, in insurance business, claims is the moment of truth for the customers.
“Since satisfied customers tend to stay longer with the same insurance company, we definitely expect Liberty Health 360-in-house claims processing department to act as a catalyst in retaining more of our customers,” Asthana said.
However, he said the company did not have any problems with its sole TPA.
Citing the company’s motor insurance portfolio, he said 85 per cent of the motor insurance damages are surveyed by in-house surveyors which has resulted in bringing down the turnaround time and also the policy holder complaints.
Asthana said currently there are 20 people in the health insurance claims processing team including qualified doctors and other medical experts.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Chennai : India’s insurance regulator on Monday extended the time to link Aadhaar number to insurance policies till March 31, 2018.
In a circular issued on Monday to all the life, non-life (including standalone health insurers) the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) said the date of submission of the Aadhaar Number and Permanent Account Number or Form 60 by clients to reporting entity is March 31, 2018.
The Irdai cited the central government’s gazette notification on December 13, relating to Prevention of Money-Laundering (Maintenance of Records) (Seventh Amendment) Rules, 2017.
On November 8, the Irdai had directed the insurers to link Aadhaar and Pan Card numbers with insurance policies.
“These rules have statutory force and, as such, life and general insurers (including standalone health insurers) have to implement them without awaiting further instructions,” the Irdai had said in a statement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Business Summit, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Emerging Businesses, Events, Large Enterprise
By Sourabh Kulesh,
Mumbai : Reliance Group’s Unlimit — an Internet of Things (IoT) venture for enterprises — and tech giant IBM on Monday announced a collaboration to co-create IoT solutions for industry verticals, including automotive, insurance, utilities and industrial automation.
The two companies are developing IoT solutions for implementation across Reliance Group companies, addressing key segments such as user-based insurance (Reliance general insurance), asset and vehicle tracking (Reliance commercial finance), tower monitoring (Reliance communications) and transformer maintenance (BSES & Reliance energy).
“With 2.7 billion connected devices and growing, Indian economy, enterprises and consumers are embracing IoT at a rampant pace,” Harriet Green, General Manager, Watson IoT, Customer Engagement and Education, IBM, told reporters here at the first-ever IBM ‘Genius of Things (GoT)’ summit.
“Our collaboration is an example of IBM leading the global IoT movement with a growing ecosystem of clients and partners. This underscores how IBM and ‘Unlimit’ are taking the power of IoT to Indian enterprises and capturing the phenomenon of digital disruption for joint client innovation,” she added.
As part of the collaboration, IBM will provide its Watson IoT Platform to collect and connect data, including sensor data, from devices and provide use-case specific dashboards.
“As India is becoming the hot bed for digital disruption, we are confident that our powerful technology platform, with Watson IoT at its core, will provide enterprises with a flexible, scalable and secure solution,” Juergen Hase, CEO, ‘Unlimit’, told reporters here.
Unlimit will design IoT use cases for various industries in the Indian market and build them on the IBM Watson IoT Platform, which provides device registration, IoT rules, advanced analytics, visualisation, reports and cognitive capabilities for each use case.
As a result, rather than approaching businesses on one-by-one basis, Unlimit will provide customers with access to these capabilities so that they can leverage IoT-driven insights and information for business decisions, create new product offerings and revenue streams.
The Unlimit IoT platform aired at the enterprise users was launched in April this year. Unlimit aims to provide a common platform for vertical industries such as automation, healthcare, agriculture, financial services and asset tracking.
Green said that IBM’s amazing Cloud capabilities enable all communication and infrastructure that is needed to work for the transformation of businesses.
“We have a set of applications that allow us track, record and work together effectively through exceptional software. ‘Watson’, designed especially for IoT, also works as a differentiator for the company,” Green added.
Watson analyses the massive structured and unstructured data to help digital transformation of companies.
IBM also announced key clients and partnerships with Kone, KPIT, Avanijal Agri Automation, Acculi Labs, Tech Mahindra and Arrow Electronics to drive IoT growth in India.
“With an unparalleled, growing global ecosystem of over 6,000 clients, 1,400 partners and 750 IoT patents, IBM is uniquely positioned to lead the IoT revolution across industries and help companies in India plug into critical new revenue streams,” said Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, IBM India/South Asia.
Through a multi-year agreement with IBM, Kone will tap into the IBM IoT Cloud Platform to connect, remotely monitor and optimise the management of millions of elevators, escalators, doors and turnstiles in buildings.
KPIT, a global technology company that specialises in product engineering and IT solutions across several industries, will use IBM’s IoT Continuous Engineering to deliver high-quality designs and connected products efficiently.
Avanijal Agri Automation will use the company’s ‘Irrigation Automation System’ solution to collect and log irrigation data from various sensors on the field for agronomical analysis which helps further enhance the yield on a continuous basis.
Acculi Labs will leverage IBM’s IoT platform to build and scale “Lyfas” — a scalable rural healthcare solution to smooth the flow of data from the edge device to cloud for further analysis and prognostics.
With IBM IoT solutions, Arrow Electronics will offer more than 160 industry-leading cloud services such as artificial intelligence (AI), Blockchain, advanced data analytics and cyber security to customers.
Tech Mahindra is harnessing IBM technology for designing experiences through orchestration of systems, sensors, devices, platforms, external data, back-end systems, analytics engine and much more.
(Sourabh Kulesh can be contacted at sourabh.kulesh@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate finance, Opinions
By K R Sudhaman*
Insurance industry in India is a $250 billion industry, equivalent to four-fifth of the country’s foreign exchange reserves. But its growth has been hampered because of the unusual delay in the passage of Insurance amendment bill, which 10 years after it was conceived was passed by Parliament recently.
Life insurance has potential to grow at 12 per cent annually and general insurance by 22 per cent in the next ten years as insurance penetration is one of the lowest in the world. But what was standing in the way was infusion of fresh capital, particularly foreign, which was possible only if the foreign direct investment cap is raised. The Insurance amendment bill has precisely done that by raising the FDI cap to 49 per cent from the present 26 per cent.
The last few years have been challenging for the industry with declining growth in life insurance premiums and significant challenges in non-life profitability. This was driven by a combination of macro-economic factors and structural challenges inherent in the insurance industry. Confederation of Indian Industry is of the view that this can be reversed by concerted action by industry players. The Insurance amendment bill also brings in regulatory reforms.
A CII report prepared in partnership with global consultancy firm McKinsey says the Insurance industry in India is at an inflexion point in its development. With Government’s reformative drive and resolve, the industry can jointly achieve the vision of building a customer centric and value-creating industry over the next decade. The inclusive growth will enable India to become a global top 10 insurance market with a total Gross Written Premium size of $250 billion.
India had very poor penetration of life insurance cover accounting for less than one per cent of population. With the opening up of the sector to private players and foreign direct investment up to 26 per cent in the late 1990s, the life insurance cover has more than trebled to 3.7 per cent of the population by 2012. With FDI cap being raised up to 49 per cent now, the life insurance cover will nearly double to 6 per cent of population in the next five years and to more than 10 per cent by 2025. It is also not true to say that state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India’s growth has been stunted with the opening up. In fact opening up has helped LIC as new technologies and methods have come into the sector now and competition had made the state owned organization more aggressive. LIC’s annual premium on life insurance has increased from Rs 19,000 crore at the turn of the century to 3.64 lakh crore by 2012
To achieve the targets set for next five years, India needs nearly Rs 50,000 crore of additional capital in the sector, of which nearly half would have to come by way of foreign investment.
The Life Insurance industry has around 380 million policies in force and pays claims for around 12 per cent of the total deaths in the country. It has a critical role given the limited social security avenues available and has also played a crucial role in inculcating the savings habit among a large mass of the population which has limited access to other forms of savings, the CII study says.
Over the last five decades, the industry has developed significantly on dimensions related to access, efficiency and structure. However, much of the gains of the first 10 years of insurance sector liberalisation have been wiped out in the past 4 years as the industry has been impacted significantly by macro-economic, regulatory and internal structural challenges. The industry is at the crossroads today, with a real risk of losing its relevance if the status quo continues. The insurance reform bill has therefore come at an appropriate time.
Take for instance health insurance cover. The amount of money individuals spent on medical treatment totaled to around Rs 3 lakh crore annually in India, of which only Rs 20,000 crore is through insurance cover. The rest Rs 2.8 lakh crore is spent on medical treatment particularly by the poor and lower middle class through their hard-earned savings or borrowing at high cost or by selling family silver. The general insurance cover, of which health and motor vehicle insurance formed part of it accounted for only 0.7 per cent of the population. It is expected to double to nearly 2 percent in the next five years. With life and general insurance cover doubling in the next five to 10 years more than 700 million lives can be covered providing much needed social safety net hitherto not available to vast majority of the population. With Jan-Dhan Yojana, which has a mandatory accident insurance cover, can help in insurance penetration. Crop insurance is yet another area where there is a lot of potential.
The General Insurance industry has witnessed a strong performance with 18 per cent growth between 2005 and 2014 and is now a $13 billion industry breaking into the top 20 industry globally. It currently provides cover of more than $ 17,000 billion.
But home insurance penetration is less than 1 per cent; there is significant under-insurance in segments such as two-wheelers and personal health; corporate (property and indemnity), SME and rural risk coverage are substantially lower than global benchmarks. These are areas in which there could be significant growth in the next 5-10 years.
The government sponsored Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) provides coverage to the population below the poverty line. The health insurance cover provided to poor in Tamil Nadu has worked wonders. It has not only helped poor get treatment but also helped government earn money through insurance claim. The Tamil Nadu government’s popular health card scheme that provided insurance up to 2 lakh per family or individual has helped General Hospital in Chennai alone earn Rs 18 crore last year by way insurance claim for treatment of poor people covered under the scheme. This scheme could win-win for both government and poor people.
The government has recently announced that it would promote universal health coverage. There are several learnings from other markets as well. In Brazil 40 per cent of the spending on health is through health insurance unlike in India where it is just 6-7 per cent. Health insurance has potential to penetrate to more than 75 per cent of 1.2 billion population in the country.
The Insurance Amendment Bill, passed by parliament also safeguards Indian ownership and control and provided Insurance regulator, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) flexibility to discharge its functions more effectively and efficiently. The Bill amends the Insurance Act, 1938, the General Insurance Business (Nationalization) Act, 1972 and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) Act, 1999.
The amended law, which replaces an ordinance enacted in December 2014, also enables foreign reinsurers to set up branches in India including top global re-insurance company Llyods.
It is not India alone opening up its insurance sector. Many countries allow foreign direct investment in the insurance sector as domestic companies do not have the wherewithal or resourced to meet insurance requirement of the entire population. Also reinsurance is critical for sharing the risk cover involving billions of dollars in the event of natural calamities and large accidents. In US, UK, Japan, France and Germany, FDI up to 100 per cent is allowed in the sector. Even in China up to 50 per cent FDI is allowed. In case of Indonesia it is 80 per cent and Malaysia, it is 51 per cent. Even after the opening up only up to 49 per cent FDI is allowed in India.
Apart from deepening penetration, the opening up of insurance and pension sector helps Indian government and companies to access long-term funding for infrastructure projects, which require investment up to $1 trillion in the next five years. Only pension and insurance funds can provide long-term capital of 10-30 years duration as only they have access to such long term deposits. Unfortunately in India commercial banks fund infrastructure projects because access to long-term capital is now limited. Banks by nature get deposits short-to-medium term and hence lend short-to-medium term. Now by lending long term, banks in India have asset-liability mis-match. Access to pension and insurance funds will make it easier for long term funding of infra projects. Foreign insurance players operating in India will now provide access to pension and insurance funds of their parent companies. The US and Canadian pension and insurance funds are waiting to invest their huge capital in countries like India this insurance reform will pave the way.
*K R Sudhaman is a freelance Business Journalist and is a former Economics Editor, Press Trust of India, TickerNews and Financial Chronicle.
