“We’ll put the basic building blocks in place and then scale up”

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Gold the most preferred investment

: Rajesh Relhan, who took over as the CEO of MetLife India recently, is busy charting out strategies to catch up with big players in the domestic life insurance industry. In an exclusive interview, he shares some of his plans with Sitanshu Swain of FE. Excerpts:

How is that being the largest life insurance company in the USA and the second in the world, you are lying low in India?

To be a formidable player in the life insurance industry, a long term view needs to be adopted. Different insurers adopt varied entry strategies; it is not unusual for life companies to approach new markets with a bit of cautious optimism, take time to understand the market and then gradually build a market position. Our approach has been to put the basic building blocks in place and then scale up. As an expression of our commitment to India, we recently raised our capital to Rs 530 crore.

We follow a multi-distribution approach with equal emphasis on the agency and the bancassurance channels of distribution. The last Munich Re India Group Market Survey -- an industry survey where the respondents were life insurance companies, ranked MetLife second in terms of “strength of competitor”. We have a 10% market share of the group business measured in lives covered with around 7 lakh lives on our books.

In our effort to provide speedy state-of-the-art customer service, we have invested in an Automatic Underwriting Risk Analysis (AURA) system that sifts through applications and grades them according to the various parameters. AURA ensures that in a country as vast as India we have an efficient service delivery mechanism that maintains the same levels of quality and efficiency across the country.

Are you planning a total revamp to make the company more aggressive?

Our immediate objective is to achieve our financial goals, achieve our top-line growth through innovation and strengthen our distribution network. On the bancassurance front, our recent tie-up with UTI Bank has given us a pan-India presence as the bank has around 500 branches across 208 locations. To grow our agency business we plan to open 70-80 offices during this year.

Do you think the Indian life insurance market, even after five years of liberalisation, is yet to be innovative and is yet to be aware of the benefits of insurance?