'I am very happy to see that the work is starting to bear some fruit now.'
Will allowing business correspondents to hawk insurance products help in reviving 5-lakh strong field agents as a viable channel?
'We want to play the value game for our consumers, which is health and retail will grow faster for us than the group.'
'Currently, our individual first premium would be in the Rs 3,000-Rs 3,200 crore range. We want to take that to about Rs 6,000 crore in three years.'
India has a huge untapped population which doesn't have facilities for financial aid and insurance, and it is perhaps plausible to look at the option of having niche players catering to smaller sectors akin to non-banks and microfinance institutions in lending, said Rakesh Joshi, member (Finance & Investment), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai). Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit, Joshi said, "Today, most of our insurance companies operate at a national level. There is arguably a case for having differentiated operations, which cater to niche sectors the same way we have non-banking financial companies (NBFC) and microfinance institutions in lending." "The capital requirement for niche players may not be as large as those having national ambitions. "Enabling these niche players, which require lower capital, will enhance the penetration in areas which hitherto had not seen traction from large players," he said.
'As our per capita income increases and various demographic segments emerge, the need for various kinds of protection and risk covers will become even more explicit.'
