NEW DELHI: Oriental Insurance Company Ltd is targeting 20% growth in premium income in 2012-13 financial year and is planning to expand its footprint to Oman, Chairman-cum-Managing Director R K Kaul said.
“We are targeting growth of 20% in 2012-13 which would take us close to `8,000 crore (of premium income) this year. We have been a bit conservative in writing business, discounting premiums to the extent that they become uneconomical,” he told Express.
On the growth in premium income in 2011-12, Kaul said the government-owned general insurer had clocked a growth of around11%. He attributed the slowdown in premium income to group health policies as they were a major drag on the company’s bottomline.
“We were cleaning up our group health policies where we gave about `200 crore of premiums and did not go very aggressively to get more group health (business),” he said.
According to IRDA data, Oriental Insurance had gross premium underwritten totalling to `5,348 crore during April-February 2011-12, a growth of around 13% from the year ago period.
Having opened 200 extension counters in the previous fiscal, Kaul said the company plans to open many more this fiscal too. However, he did not provide any further details on the number of new offices and counters the company is planning to open this fiscal.
On overseas expansion plans, he said the company is awaiting regulatory clearance from IRDA for opening an office in Oman. Besides India, Oriental Insurance has operations in Nepal, Dubai and Kuwait.
It also holds a majority stake in a Kenya-based company along with New India Assurance, United India Insurance, National Insurance Company Limited and General Insurance Corporation of India.