AXA-BHARTI WILL ENSURE YOUR ART TREASURE’S SECURED

Mumbai: The speciality business of art insurance will come to India, with French insurer Axa participating in a general insurance joint venture with Bharti. Axa of France owns UK-based Axa Art Insurance — the largest specialist art insurance company in the world.
On Thursday, Bharti Axa General Insurance announced its commencement of operations. Although the main focus of the non-life company will be the tradition lines of business, it has received some informal enquires on art insurance from brokers. Bharti Axa Life has been promoted by Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Telecom in association with the French company. The two partners have already floated a life insurance company and an asset management company.
Speaking to ET, Bharti Axa General CEO Milind Chalisgaonkar said that the company would not launch a product based on one-off enquiries, as this would make it difficult to spread the risk. “We will use this enquiries to gauge the market demand for the product and then devise a product,” he said. Insuring art is a challenge for domestic insurers because of the lack of expertise available. This includes the shortage of valuation experts. In India, art owners have had bad experience with conventional insurers who have rejected claims for minor damages to art work on ground that there is no financial loss.
In the past, multinationals, which have set up shop in India, have brought in speciality products where they have a stronghold world over. For instance, German insurer Allianz, which owns a credit insurance company Gerling has brought the credit insurance product through Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. Tata AIG has introduced into the Indian market AIG’s speciality liability covers, including the directors & officers policy.
According to Bharti Axa General CEO Kim-Soon Chua, the company would leverage the distribution network of its affiliate Bharti Axa Life Insurance. He added that the company was in the process of shortlisting third-party administrator for servicing its health insurance products. For motor insurance, the company would be tying up with garages for servicing of claims. He added that once insurance companies were given the freedom to develop new products, Bharti Axa would use the expertise of Axa’s actuarial modelling centre in Singapore to develop new products.

Source: The Economic Times