Vijayan asks general insurers to adopt more digital tools

Insurance regulator Irdai has asked general insurers, which reported a 32 per cent revenue growth in fiscal 2017 at Rs 1.27 trillion, to focus on digital initiatives undertaken by it to improve market penetration and bottomlines.
The industry has targeted over Rs 1.5 trillion in the current fiscal. In fiscal 2016 the total industry stood at Rs 96,000 crore.
The issue was discussed during an interaction with Irdai chairman TS Vijayan here today which was attended by heads of various city-based non-life insurers.
Today's meeting was a regular annual meeting we have with the regulator to brief him about the year gone-by and also about the new year, General Insurance Council secretary general R Chandrasekaran told PTI.

"The non-life industry is eyeing a growth of 18-20 per cent in the current fiscal", he said, adding "the industry is looking at implementing various digital initiatives taken by the regulator to increase penetration and to save cost."
The council showcased various initiatives taken up by the body like ETASS (a portal for co-insurance transactions), a fraud analytics project and the standardisation of insured declared value of motor vehicles.

Vijayan showed a keen interest in these projects and assured support from Irdai in such industry initiatives, sources said.
"Vijayan stressed the regulator's approach to bring in more transparency and convenience riding on the digital processes," National Insurance chairman Sanath Kumar said.

SBI General managing director Pushan Mahapatra said the meeting discussed ways to increase digital footprint for customers and to achieve the desired goal of 20 per cent growth for the industry this year.
He was quick to add that digital initiatives does not mean pushing online sales, rather in claim settlement and such other customer service related activities.
Reliance General CEO Rakesh Jain said the meeting discussed some projects like e-policy and e-KYC for verification which will help improve market penetration. He also said Reliance General is the first to settle claims through the Aadhar number.