Sees protection and guarantee products as growth drivers

KR Srivats

Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance (ABSLI) sees both protection and guarantee products as growth drivers for the company as well as the life insurance industry this year in the post-Covid-19 world, a top official said.

The private life insurer uses product innovation and technology to ride demand in these segments and plans to roll out at least 2 to 3 new products over the next six months, Kamlesh Rao, Managing Director and CEO, ABSLI, told BusinessLine.

Rao said that talks are at an advanced stage with the insurance regulator IRDAI to see if a guarantee product linked to an external benchmark such as G-Sec could be introduced in the market.

“We already have one of the largest range of guarantee products. Only a week back we launched an innovative product for child plan, which is called ‘child future assured plan’. This child plan is a very interesting combination of both protection and guarantee. Now, in next 45 days or two months, we want to launch the next product on guarantee side (G-sec linked). We are yet to get the approval and hope we will be the first ones to get it,” he said.

Rao also said that ABSLI is aspiring to move up the industry league by one or two ranks over the next 18 months. The private life insurer is now at the 7th position in the industry league.

Bancassurance

On bancassurance, Rao said the company was open to expand the number of banks with which it has banca tie-ups. As on date it has 8 banca tie-ups with HDFC Bank being the biggest. “We are constantly looking for more banks and are in talks with two of them right now,” he said.

As for claim settlement ratio, the private life insurer is aspiring for claim settlement ratio of 98 to 99 per cent levels. Last year, it ended up with claim settlement ratio of 97.5 per cent.

Rao highlighted that ABSLI was one of the few companies that actually grew (10 per cent) in May this year.

“June is looking better than May, and we will definitely be higher than June of last year. The reason why we are able to do well is we have digitally enabled everything. What we have done is we have completely digitised the journey of all our products,” he said.

Published on June 23, 2020

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