Forget size, Raheja QBE’s most profitable insurer

MUMBAI: Few would have heard of Raheja QBE General Insurance, the company that’s been around for a year. That’s because it is the only insurer that has chosen to adopt a unique business model where it will restrict itself to ‘manufacturing’ and will not have a distribution set-up. The company only sells to brokers who approach it and has highly specialised liability covers as focus area.

Raheja QBE is a joint venture between Prism Cement and QBE Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of QBE Insurance Group, Australia. “As a general insurer, our focus is on manufacturing and we have decided to leave distribution to the intermediaries,” said Praveen Gupta, MD & CEO of Raheja QBE General Insurance.

The company is also different from its peers in the sense that it is at present not chasing automobile and health insurance. A unique aspect of the company is that it employs actuaries for pricing of products. In India, although non-life companies have an actuary, their involvement in product pricing is far lower than in the life insurance business.

“OBE’s focus is on underwriting and while it may not be the biggest, it is the most profitable insurer in the world,” said Mr Gupta. “By maintaining a disciplined approach to underwriting, we expect to become one of the catalysts for change in the Indian market,” he added.