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  • 'IT teams should be resourceful": Amarnath
    By Manu Sharma, Feb 04, 2010 1413 hrs IST

    Amarnath Ananthanarayanan, CEO of Bharti AXA General Insurance talks about how beneficial IT has been to his organization and how an innovative approach can help overcome challenges

    Can you give us a background of Bharti AXA?

    Bharti AXA General Insurance was set up in August 2008 and has completed one year in India. We have slightly over 1000 employees spread across 100 locations in India. In the calendar year 2009, we collected a premiums amounting to Rs. 200 crore. We choose to come to Bangalore primarily because there a couple of other AXA group companies in Bangalore - AXA Global and AXA Business Services.
    What are the key factors that impact the insurance industry?

    The key factors that impact insurance - there are two things - time taken to issue policies i.e how quickly can you get policies to customers, secondly,  how quickly the company can settle the claims of the customers'. IT plays a very important role in both.

    You see, unlike most other industries, insurance is a push industry. No one ever comes to you to buy insurance, you have to reach out to customers and I feel that IT plays a very important role in enabling us to do this. Especially, for a country like India, which has a very diverse and expansive geography, telecom and IT help to reduce these costs.

    What is the IT Infrastructure that Bharti AXA has in India?

    Bharti AXA's IT infrastructure includes AXA's online access to its customers in 100 odd locations in the country. The company makes use of its servers based out of Bangalore. Besides also has call centre facilities provided by AXA Business Services. Today the company also provides online payment gateway facilities provided by BuiltDesk and sells insurance policies through the intranet for customers to buy motor, health insurance policies.

    When it comes to IT deployment, do IT companies understand the importance of technology better than non-IT companies?

    Yes and no. It is an in interplay between the two. Where the difference lies is in the approach. An IT company's team can create a great solution but when it comes to internal deployments, one must have an IT team that understands the intricacies of the business and the vertical. Only then can the product be optimized. For example, take RFID, which almost everyone talks about. Can you create a solution around RFID to benefit the insurance sector? This is a question that our internal teams should be able to answer.

    Moving forward to you see technology becoming increasingly critical to business success?

    Absolutely. We are reaching out to the large non-metro cities across the country this includes the Tier 11 and Tier 111 cities. Since we can't set up offices in very one of these small cities, we are totally dependent on IT. Also we want to retail and distribute our low-cost products across the country. In fact, thanks to the large mobile penetration in the country, we are working on a service where in we can deliver our products through SMS. We will be utilizing Airtel services across all telecom circles as well their IT/telecom platform.

    What is your perspective on IT? Do you view it as just another tool or an important business enabler?

    Since we are a customer-centric company, what we are looking for is help in enabling us to deliver our products much quicker. Our IT team has to be the thought leaders of the company.  I expect my IT team to come up with solutions to tackle key issues which we face - like connectivity/VPN to reach out for customers spread in remote parts of the country and come out with usable solutions.
     
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