The company intends to storm the market with an exotic range of corporate, personal and health insurance products by the beginning of March 2001.

Unlike many other companies, Reliance Fire & General Industries has ventured into the insurance sector without any foreign partner and will be having a capital of slightly above Rs 100 crore. It was one of the two companies which had received license from Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority in the first phase itself along with Royal Sun Alliance to undertake non-life business. The life insurance subsidiary of Reliance Industries is waiting for the license.

The non-life operation will have 10 area offices and eight service centres all over the country. The major places where it will have area offices include Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, Pune and Lucknow.

One of the key focus of the insurance companies will be the use of information technology. Ambanis have already roped in the US-based CSE and PMS to design the high-tech structure of the insurance operations.

Apart from complete networking of its area offices, the agents will be equipped with palmtops to provide instant service to its customers. The Ambanis will be having composite agents who will be selling both life and non-life products. The non-life subsidiary has already set up 10 area offices all over the country. It has aggressively poached the state-owned non-life companies for its top-line recruitments of both life and non-life operations. Though it will make use of the existing channels of its non-banking finance arm Reliance Capital, it is in the process of recruiting agents.

To implement its health insurance operation, the company has already identified third party administrator (TPA) which will be the co-ordinating agency among different health service providers.

The non-life company will also deal with motor insurance which is a loss-making business for the state-owned non-life companies.

It believes that the high loss is due to high corruption and mismanagement of the motor portfolio by the public sector company rather than anything else. The company may not underwrite much of its captive business. The domestic non-life market which is pegged at present around Rs 10,000 crore will witness a tough battle among titans to have a market share. The other companies which are gearing up to start business are, Tata-AIG, Royal Sun Alliance, Iffico-Tokio Marine, Mitsui-Marine and Chubb.