Livelihood promotion group BASIX, in association with Aviva Life Insurance and Royal Sundaram Alliance General Insurance, has launched a retail model for sale of insurance products in rural areas.
The three institutions announced that insurance products will be sold through BASIX branches and Common Service Centres (CSCs). After the successful implementation of pilot projects, the aim now is to sell insurance products through 1,200 CSCs across two States, and 60 BASIX branches across nine States by March 2013.
They claimed that, for the first time, online selling of micro insurance and settlement of claims can be done through scanned images. The three institutions have completed a decade’s partnership in selling micro insurance.
So far, they have settled a total of 1.66 lakh claims worth Rs 80.49 crore in both life and non-life sectors. And have collected a premium of Rs 153.8 crore. In life insurance, their claims paid ratio is 94 per cent, while for non-life it is 83 per cent. Overall, the claims rejection ratio is around 10 per cent.
According to the Founder and CEO of the BASIX Group Vijay Mahajan, “The uptake of individual policies as against group is increasing. We expect to cover one million customers through online insurance in 2013.â€
Aviva Life Insurance Managing Director and CEO, T. R. Ramachandran, added, “We see the rural sector as an opportunity as 72 per cent of the population hails from rural India, of which, only 5 per cent are covered by insurance.â€
The Managing Director of Royal Sundaram, Ajay Bimbhet, said that his company was the first in India to offer online rural health insurance policy through BASIX, CSC locations in Maharashtra. “We will extend our online offering to other rural retail products by January 2013,†he informed.
