Insurers want no cap on discounts

MUMBAI: The general insurance industry is lobbying hard to ensure a completely free pricing regime. After the removal of tariffs in January this year, the insurance regulator — IRDA — had set a cap to limit the amount of discounts offered to customers to make sure the market did not witness a rampant slide in prices. While the cap on discounts for fire and engineering products was set at around 55%, the cap on discounts offered to customers purchasing the own damage motor insurance cover was set at 20%. If the regulator lifts the caps, players may well end up offering more discounts to customers. Heads of the general insurance firms are going to meet IRDA to discuss this on June 11. General insurers feel that instead of the regulator monitoring prices, it should only focus on monitoring the solvency of companies. Instead, companies should be allowed the freedom of fixing prices based on their individual claims experience and underwriting guidelines.
Source: Times News Network

Why insurance shouldn't be mixed with investment

My insurance agent has made around 30 different endowment policies for me, each with sum assured Rs 50,000. The term of these policies varies: beginning from 20 years, the term increases to, say, 21, 22, 23, 24 years and up to 30 years. Should I continue paying the premium, as it annually comes to Rs 51,000 premium? I am a middle class person (age 26) and earning Rs 3 lakh annually with no home loans and no car loans and dependents are my wife and son (age 1 month). My yearly expenses come to Rs 90,000. With these policies, if I continue, I am supposed to pay premium up to 65 years as the last policy has a term of 33 years.... Please suggest what can I do at this stage. If I lapse these set of endowment policies now, I lose around Rs 26,500, as I have got Rs 20,000 commission from the agent and considering the insurance cost of one year. I took this policy in August 2006 and I have paid premiums for one year. What should be my term insurance if I quit this endowment policy? Thanks (Name withheld) This was a mail a financial planner received recently. He and his ilk are used to people like this, who are saddled with a large number of policies, and regret the fact. "You come across large number of such cases. Often insurance agents put together 30-40 different policies and structure a product. They even give the product a name," says Amar Pandit, a certified financial planner (CFP), who runs My Financial Advisor. "Insurance agents often put together many insurance plans of different maturity and sell it to unsuspecting customers as a tax-free pension plan. They sell it on the premise that once you turn 55, one policy would start maturing every year, assuring you tax-free money every year. Mostly people fall for it as they don't bother to find out the details," says D Sundararajan, investment consultant, Trendy investment. Why do people fall for it? "Insurance agents are actually exploiting people's general aversion towards term insurance cover. Most people don't like the fact that they don't get any money from a term cover on maturity. Agents try to overcome this problem with suggesting endowment plans or ULIP (unit linked insurance plan), which will offer them money on maturity," explains Sundararajan. "It is a question of what the customer wants. You can tell them about the importance of adequate insurance cover, but if they still don't want term insurance, you have to sell them plans with a saving or investment element," says an insurance advisor, who doesn't want to be named. Financial advisors are quick to point out that going for "regular endowment plans" (insurance policies with saving element in it) or ULIPs (insurance policies which offer you diverse investment options) would deprive you of adequate life insurance cover. This is mainly because unlike term plans (insurance polices which offer you only risk cover; they have no saving or investment element and if your survive the term, you won't get any money) these plans are expensive. "Most people don't realise the importance of having an adequate cover. If you don't have adequate cover, your dependents would suffer if something happens to you. The basic idea of insurance is to provide money to your dependents on your death," says Sundararajan. The best way to avoid this confusion, according to him, is to keep insurance and investment separately. "Get a pure term cover for insurance purpose and opt for a mutual fund scheme for capital building or retirement," he says. P.S.: If you are saddled with as large a number of policies as our protagonist, you should try this option: "If you have bought these policies recently, say, three to five years ago, then get rid of them. Take whatever little you may get by surrendering them. Even if they don't have any surrender value, get rid of them," says Amar Pandit. "If you have bought them long ago and have only five to 10 years for maturity, continue paying the premium," he adds. And don't forget to get an adequate cover through a pure term insurance plan.
Source: Times of India, June 1, 2007

UK insurance major Resolution to outsource jobs to India

LONDON: British insurance major Resolution has announced plans to outsource a number of jobs to India as part of a deal with support services company Capita to reduce costs. Resolution, which manages funds for Scottish Mutual, Scottish Provident and Phoenix Life, said in a statement, "It is not appropriate to move any customer facing roles, voice contact or customer data to India." Resolution's chief executive Mike Biggs said, "We are working very closely with Capita to ensure that any redundancy impact on our staff is minimised." Daryl Williams of Unite said the union was "deeply disappointed" by Resolution's decision to outsource and offshore a significant number of jobs to India." The changes arise from a larger deal involving 2,000 Resolution employees, most of them in Glasgow, who will shift to Capita which will take on administration work involving 4.5 million policyholders. A spokesman said that Capita intends to offer jobs elsewhere in its organisation to Resolution employees who would otherwise become redundant. He said, "Capita has a lot of activities in the region and staff that cannot be placed will be offered work in them. They may not continue to work in Resolution, but the hope is that they will be found other work in Capita organisations in the region." As part of the deal, around 2,000 Resolution staff, 1,550 in Glasgow and 450 in Birmingham, will transfer to Capita. Most of the Birmingham jobs will move to Glasgow. Jobs moving to India will involve customer service and IT roles. Resolution has plans to invest 140 million pounds in merging its customer service and IT processes, aimed at delivering cost savings of pounds 20m a year. Paul Pindar, Capita's chief executive said the contract, worth about 580 million pounds, was Capita's largest ever and "consolidates our position as market leader in this particular segment."
Source : Times of India

Yogesh Lohiya as chairman cum managing director of GIC Re.

The central government has appointed Yogesh Lohiya as chairman cum managing director of GIC Re. Lohiya is promoted from the post of general manager of the New Delhi based Oriental Insurance. An engineer by profession he has authored various books on Insurance.He joined Oriental Insurance in 1977 as a class-I officer. Presently Lohiya is member of Study Group on Insurance of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Lohiya shall resume the charge of CMD on 28th May 2007.

New India, Reliance General lead insurance sector in FY07

Chennai: The government owned New India Assurance Company Limited became the first domestic non-life insurer to cross the Rs5,000 crore gross premium income mark. Though it closed FY07 with a premium income of Rs5,024.15 crore against Rs4,791.51 crore in the previous year, yet it logged the lowest growth rate amongst government insurers with just at 4.86 per cent growth.
Out of the four government companies only United India and Oriental Insurance Company Limited (premium income Rs3,940.53 crore) logged double-digit growth last year. National Insurance Company Limited ended the year with a gross premium income of Rs3810.88 crore, representing 8.15-per cent growth.
On the other hand private sector Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd registered a stupendous growth rate of 461.96 per cent — the highest amongst the 12 non-life insurers — and earned a premium income of Rs912.23 crore. In the process it catapulted itself to the seventh rank last fiscal from twelfth in the previous year with a premium of Rs162.33 crore.
The other high growth company last year was the Chennai-based Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company Limited that earned Rs314.59 crore and registered a growth rate of 41.57 per cent.
Bcking the growth trend was another private sector insurer, Chubb General Insurance Company Limited, which logged a negative growth of 7.59 per cent, earning Rs190.16 crore, down from Rs205.77 crore in FY06.
Apart from these, the rankings amongst the 12 non-life insurers last fiscal remained unchanged. The much expected event — ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited dislodging United India Insurance Company Limited from the fourth spot did not happen. United India closed the year with a gross premium of Rs3,509.95 crore leaving behind ICICI Lombard with Rs3,003.45 crore.
For quite some time during the year that went by, the difference in the premium income between the two was around Rs300 crore, fuelling expectations of private sector ICICI Lombard overtaking government owned United India.
What is interesting is that ICICI Lombard has widened the topline difference between itself and the Pune-based Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited by Rs1,198.85 crore as against Rs307.43 crore at the end of FY06. Last fiscal Bajaj Allianz closed its books with a premium of Rs1,804.60 crore.
On its part Bajaj Allianz General was the only insurer to have an underwriting profit (premium income minus claims paid) for three consecutive years and also the first private insurer to cross the Rs100-crore in profit before tax, generating Rs117 crore. Its after-tax profit stood at Rs76 crore up from Rs52 crore in 2005-06.
It also continued with its policy of transparency by declaring its detailed financials on the net.
According to Bajaj Allianz General, CEO Kamesh Goyal, "The year 2006-07 was significant for the industry as we witnessed a transition from a regulated to a de-tariffed regime. Our focus has and will continue to be maintaining the right balance between growth and profitability."
At the macro level the domestic non-life industry crossed a landmark figure of Rs25,000- crore premium during the year under review. The industry registered a premium of Rs25,002.45 crore as against Rs20,431.82 crore the previous year. The share of government companies in this is Rs16,285.51 crore as against the private player's share of Rs8,716.94 crore.
Meanwhile the two specialised insurers – Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India (ECGC) and Star Health & Allied Insurance- have also turned out good performance. The former earned Rs618.05 crore and the later Rs22.42 crore.