Offence may be United Insurance''s best defence

Venkatachari Jagannathan
01 November 1999

The Chennai-based United India Insurance Company Ltd, with a premium income Rs.2,221.28 crore premium income, is gearing itself to cope with the imminent opening up of India's insurance sector to private and foreign insurers. The public sector insurance company has prepared interesting strategies, including flexing of its muscles to combat competition.

In addition, an expert committee under the chairmanship of K.P.Geethakrishnan, former Union finance secretary, has been constituted to advise the company on how to function in a deregulated environment.

Speaking about the company's strategy, K N Bhandari, its chairman-cum-managing director, says that United India's first priority is to network all of its 1,100 offices in the country by March 2001. The company has earmarked a capital expenditure of Rs.100 crore for this purpose.

"This would facilitate faster issuance of policies and speedier claims settlement. Our computerisation will be customer-centric, and we shall migrate to web-based front-end operations," he says.

United India has already begun such activity in a small way. You can now get a premium quotation for it's the company's Mediclaim policy by visiting the company's website and feeding in your data. "We are getting active response from non-resident Indians for this," he says Mr Bhandari.

According to officials, the totally integrated underwriting, accounts and claims module would cover about 170 insurance products in the company's portfolio.