ICICI Lombard General Insurance, the country’s largest private sector general insurer, is not looking at listing for now, said Bhargav Dasgupta, Managing Director and CEO.

This general insurer also does not plan to raise any equity capital this fiscal even as it expects its business growth to outpace the likely industry growth of over 20 per cent. The general insurance industry is widely expected to show strong growth this fiscal on the back of buoyancy in agriculture insurance.

“We don’t see any immediate need to raise equity capital. There is also retained earnings that could be utilised. However, we may look at subordinated debt, now that the IRDA has opened up and allowed it,” Dasgupta told BusinessLine in an interview.

ICICI Lombard is currently capitalised at ₹450 crore and has a net worth of ₹3,176 crore.

Dasgupta said the company is open to the idea of listing, but nothing immediate was being done on this front. “Nothing on the anvil right now,” he said.

Dasgupta’s remarks on listing are significant as they come at a time when the country’s public sector general insurers — at least two of the four — are preparing to list themselves on the bourses this year.

“The way I see this is, it (listing of public sector general insurers) will be positive for the entire industry,” Dasgupta said.

ICICI Lombard, a pioneer of sorts in introducing weather-based insurance in India, is hopeful of riding on the success of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana this fiscal.

This company currently provides crop insurance in Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha.

One of the challenges of the erstwhile National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) was that the process was too manual and there were many slippages. Also, the farmer got his payment after a long wait. ICICI Lombard now wants to use technology for identification and settlement so that both farmer and industry are benefited, Dasgupta noted.

“I don’t think the mission is ready. We have done experiments with the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan governments in using satellite imagery and drones to figure out where the damages are real and where damages have not happened,” Dasgupta said.

He also made it clear that ICICI Lombard had no plans to dilute focus on agriculture insurance this fiscal even though many companies in the last two years made losses on this front due to poor monsoon.

Agriculture insurance this fiscal is expected to move ahead of fire insurance and emerge as the third-largest segment in the general insurance industry, according to Dasgupta.

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