Thaindian News

Chennai, July 16 (IANS) City-based non-life insurer Cholamandalam MS is targeting a premium of Rs.900 crore this fiscal and hoping to bring down its underwriting loss (premium minus claims paid), a top company official said Friday.
“We expect motor insurance to contribute Rs.550 crore to our top line. The remaining will be from other business lines like health, property and others,” Managing Director S.S. Gopalarathnam told reporters here.

Chola MS is a 74:26 joint venture between the Murugappa group and the Japanese Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group.

The company will launch new health and weather insurance policies, said Gopalarathnam.

According to him, the company suffered an underwriting loss of Rs.39 crore last year and the expectation is to bring down it to Rs.15 crore this fiscal.

“Bulk of the underwriting loss is due to our share of motor third party loss from the motor third party pool. Further, we have now exited the group health and overseas travel insurance for those going abroad for jobs,” he said.

(Motor insurance premium towards third party liability is remitted by all general insurers to a fund maintained by General Insurance Corporation of India. The loss or profit is shared among the insurers on the basis of their top line.)

Chola MS Friday launched the facility of buying overseas travel insurance online and hopes to get a sizeable share in the Rs.300 crore market that is logging an annual growth of 20 percent.

“The outbound traffic from India is growing at 20 percent and will reach around 13 million this fiscal end with passengers travelling abroad for tourism, business and studies. Further, more and more ticketing will happen online and travellers will want to buy the travel policies online,” he said.

He said the policies bought online will be 15 percent cheaper as there is no agent - insurance or travel- is involved in the buying process.

Chola MS hopes to earn Rs.20 crore from selling travel insurance policies this year up from Rs.15 crore earned last year.

Asked about the sales of online car insurance policies, Gopalarathnam said: “It is catching up. Last month we earned Rs.30 lakh (Rs.3 million) from online sales. By the end of this calendar year we hope to earn rupees one crore from online sales.”

The company will soon extend its online presence to the other products like health, home and personal accident.