Shriram Life: Great expectations

New entrant Shriram Life Insurance Company Limited hopes to turn profitable in four years while other Indian private insurers expect to take seven.

Chennai: At a time when all the private life insurers uniformly say that it would take at least seven years to break even, the Chennai-based Shriram group says its life insurance outfit will be profitable in only four years.

The group, a recent entrant into the life insurance sector with its Shriram Life Insurance Company Limited — a 74:26 joint venture between the Shriram group through its Shriram Financial Holdings and Sanlam Life Insurance Limited, South Africa. The company expects to start operations soon and is awaiting the R2 licence for grant of certification of registration from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA).

Licensing of insurance companies is done in two stages. The first is the R1 stage where the prospective entrant submits a request to IRDA to grant the application for registration. The prospective applicant has to submit a wide variety of information to IRDA before getting the application for registration.

R2 Stage, involves an application for grant of certification of registration. IRDA, after studying the information provided by the prospective insurer then grants the certification of registration.

The company is also in the process of selecting the top management team.