ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company, which sells motor insurance policies among other product categories, has taken the service angle beyond the claim settlement by offering pick-up and repair of vehicles as well.
This comes at no extra cost for the customer and is part of the company's effort to improve the service quality, according to Bhargav Dasgupta, managing director of ICICI Lombard.
It service team would arrange a pick-up for the vehicle and get it repaired at a garage besides settling the damage claim on client's request. Usually owners handle these things in times of accidents or breakdown of vehicles on the road side.
"We think that focusing on the service is a better way of handling the insurance business than the pursuit for more business at a time the industry was going through the slowdown," Dasgupta told Business Standard.
The growth in general insurance or the non-life sector has come down to 13 per cent in the current year from 19 per cent last year, according to him.
Among other such initiatives, the company recently launched out-patient department (OPD) products as, according to Dasgupta, close to 75 per cent of health-related costs of the individuals are incurred from buying medicines. It expects to achieve a gross written premium of around Rs 7,500 crore in the current fiscal from Rs 6,420 crore last year. ICICI Lombard GIC is a joint venture between ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financials Holding Limited.
The general insurance sector in the country is of the size of close to Rs 75,000 crore in terms of gross business premium collections and over 80 per cent of the premium collections is spent on policy holders through claim settlements, according to M Rama Prasad, member (non-life) of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irda).
