AVIVA TO TAP RURAL MARKET IN PUNJAB

Madrid: Keen on reaching out to a larger number of rural customers, Aviva Life Insurance is planning to forge liaisons for micro-insurance with financial institutions across various states, including Punjab.

The company was working towards providing new and integrated products to cater to specific needs of low-income segments and also have a paperless policy enforcement in rural areas, said Monica Agrawal, director corporate initiatives, Aviva, on the concluding day of the Aviva Insurance Summit here today.

With an untapped potential of almost $2 billion, rural India provides immense commercial opportunity to insurers, said Agrawal. “We are working with self-help groups and various micro-finance institutions like BASIX and Arohan in 12 states. The focus now, apart from building new products, is on process initiatives."

She said products like credit plus, that were linked with loans, and gramin suraksha that offered a premium as little as Rs 110 were helping the company increase its penetration in the rural segment.

Amid challenges like absence of a proper banking infrastructure, Aviva, through its partners was involving local people to increase awareness. An increasing number of customers in urban areas were approaching insurance companies through channels like mobile phones and the Internet, said Abhay Johorey, director, transformation and services. He said the proportion of those using mobile phones was much higher than the ones who opted for the Internet.

"There are issues like reducing the time gap to reach customers once they contact the company using a phone or the Internet and also having systems that can deal with the changing technologies in mobile phones so as to gain the maximum through these channels," he added.

Johorey said insurance players had covered barely 2 per cent of the population that could be tapped.

Source: Shveta Pathak
The Tribune