‘Entire thrust will be on retail health this year, ’ says Girija Subramanian

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Written by Narayanan V

August 7, 2025 19:13 IST

Girija Subramanian, chairperson & MD, New India Assurance. (Image Source: Facebook)

The New India Assurance Company, India largest general insurer, will double down on retail health insurance — a segment currently dominated by standalone health insurers. Chairperson and managing director Girija Subramanian speaks to Narayanan V about the retail health push, the premium outlook for FY26 and new growth areas. Excerpts:

What has been the impact of stagnant motor third party (TP) premiums on the business?

Motor TP is a mandatory line of business. We are obligated to provide cover to anyone who seeks it. However, premium rates are fixed by the government, and we have no say in the matter. There hasn’t been any significant revision in TP premiums for the past five–six years. The industry has made several representations to the government, the regulator (IRDAI), and MoRTH, but so far there has not been any indication of an increase.

This is a growing concern for the industry. For insurers to sustain, premiums must be adequate. Currently, loss ratios in motor TP are very high. Many claims end up in court, and legal awards have seen double-digit increases, significantly raising claim costs. If premiums remain unchanged, it will have a detrimental effect on insurers and will increase their loss ratios.

With health insurance contributing over 50% to GWP, are you looking to diversify the portfolio?

Health accounted for about 46% of our GWP last year. Motor vehicles contributed 26–27%, fire around 10%, and the rest came from marine, crop, and other segments. Our portfolio mix broadly reflects market trends. We are comfortable with health remaining at that level, but this year, our focus is on driving growth in the retail segment. Retail health consistently performs better than the corporate (employer-employee) business. Currently, retail makes up around 15–20% of our health GWP. We are aiming to increase it to 30–35% of our health portfolio.

How do you plan to grow the retail health book?

The competition in retail health is intense, mainly because standalone health insurers focus heavily on it — 70–90% of their book is retail. They are aggressive with commission structures, and their agency force is fully aligned to retail health. In contrast, our agents work across motor, health, and other segments, so retail health doesn’t always get the focused attention. We have now started addressing this. We are adding more agents and training them to be more aggressive on retail health. We are also improving incentives to make them best-in-class. We are tapping other distribution channels — web aggregators and bancassurance — to push retail health. Alongside, we are focusing on continuous education and awareness for our agents, and closely tracking how their performance contributes to our growth.

Loss ratios in motor own damage stand at 116.35%. What’s your strategy to bring this down?

We are concerned about the loss ratios on motor own damage (OD) policies. We tried several measures last year, but the loss ratio still remains high. Motor OD performance depends a lot on the channel through which the policy is sold. Going forward, we will be experimenting with our channel mix — that’s how we can improve the quality of our retail business. A significant portion of our business currently comes through OEMs and dealer channels. We will explore agency and other channels to write more retail business. Risk selection will be key here. We are also working on shifting our portfolio mix more towards private cars and less towards commercial vehicles. Once this strategy is implemented across channels, we expect to see the right kind of results.