In these trying Covid-19 times, Digit Insurance, a new age digital general insurer, is eyeing 25-30 per cent growth in premium income this fiscal, a top official said.

This three-year-old insurer sees health as well as motor insurance as growth drivers for its 100 per cent digital platform, although the motor is expected to be subdued in coming days due to Covid-19 induced lockdown, Vivek Chaturvedi, Head of Marketing & Online Sales, Digit Insurance told BusinessLine.

Digit Insurance will also this fiscal focus energies on scaling up its offerings around small and medium enterprises (SME). “In India, the penetration of insurance in SME is very low. While the Indian economy runs on SMEs, insurance penetration is low. After Covid-19, there is a big demand among SMEs for group health products for their workers. However, for their factories, that piece of insurance is not there, and that will be a focus area for us”, he said.

Chaturvedi sees the overall general insurance industry growing at best in single digits this fiscal.

“While the economic growth may come down this fiscal, we should still be doing better than the industry”, he said, adding that being digital-only player has given it some advantage in these times.

Digit Insurance, which is backed by Fairfax Group, was the first company in India that had launched a Covid-19 insurance product as part of the regulatory sandbox project. This product was withdrawn in the end March as the limit specified by the regulator got exhausted in few weeks since it launch.

Chaturvedi said that although the business has been hit in March and April due to Covid-19 induced lockdown, the customer servicing continued unaffected, thanks mainly to the cloud-based technology. “Our decision to adopt cloud from the start itself has paid rich benefits as it gave us the flexibility to manage loads. Whether it is a boost (When business went up 8-10 times)from the amendments to the Motor vehicles Act or the current Covid-19 pandemic that has affected business not only for us, but the entire industry, we were able to adjust servers”, he said.

In the month of March alone, the industry would have lost ₹3,000-4,000 crore of business. Even in April, the retail business is down by 75 per cent, he added.

In the next 2-3 weeks, this company will soon launch an insurance planning tool, which would recommend to customers an ideal way to buy the insurance and what insurance should be bought, he said.

On an overall basis, Digit sees the current fiscal as a challenging year even though it has been growing at a frenetic pace in the last two years.

comment COMMENT NOW