ICICI Lombard in hinterland thrust

ICICI Lombard has firmed up a Rs 50 crore investment plan for enhancing its rural network and has also entered into talks with the West Bengal government for insuring farmers holding cultivable land in the state through an accidental death benefit policy.

"We are in the process of signing up an agreement with the West Bengal government for insuring all farmers possessing cultivable land. This would be a group insurance policy where premium for the package would be around Rs 12 crore, while farmers would get Rs 1 lakh in case of death," explained Sandeep Bakshi, managing director and CEO, ICICI Lombard.

"At ICICI Lombard, we spent around Rs 30 crore in 2004-05 for rural network. The focus is on rural insurance and customer service. The idea is to provide weather, health and accident insurance to the rural population in India for which we are also enhancing our network," he explained.

"The bulk of the fund allocated for developing rural network would go into creation of 'touch points' in every district. In West Bengal we plan to set up around 17 touch points which would act as links between the rural folk and ICICI Lombard," he added.

"The ultimate plan was to set up touch points in every district in India where we have made considerable inroads in providing rural insurance through state governments," he said.

A portion of the fund would also go into creating awareness among the villagers through various means of mass communication and also through the state machinery like the panchayats.

Officials from the company said that ICICI Lombard would as of now use the governments network to service the policies and farmers owning lands would be selected from the land record department.

The idea was to collect the total premium from the West Bengal government and service the claims also through the state machinery hierarchy.

"We would obviously have check points to ensure that the fund reaches the affected person or his kith and kin," he added.

"The network that exists in Bengal is that of a panchayat, zilla parishad network, network which was good enough to service claims," he added.

"Premium collected from the state government was likely to be to the tune of Rs 12 crore which would translates into premium per farmer of Rs 12 or less," officials said.

"It would be up to the government to raise the amount either from the farmers or fund it themselves, but our aim would be to service them in a professional and timely manner," the officer said.

The insurance company has in fact over shot its stipulated percentage of rural policies by IRDA, by over four per cent to nine per cent. "India suffered from a series of natural calamities this year and we are also focusing on servicing," the Bakshi explained.

ICICI Lombard has already tied-up state governments from Gujarat, Maharashtra, J&K, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh.