Page 26 - The Insurance Times October 2021

Insurers Grievances Reported by the Customers in last Five Years Annualised
2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 Change
Kotak Mahindra 4616 3444 3741 3400 926 -27%
Max Life 16553 14157 8791 5544 4038 -25%
PNB MetLife 4820 4411 4383 4228 3558 -6%
Reliance 24763 14024 4958 1615 2052 -39%
Sahara 27 35 32 82 110 32%
SBI Life 12273 9391 8165 7640 4649 -18%
Shriram 240 259 379 406 577 1%
Star Union Dai ichi 2301 1825 1798 2566 2045 -2%
Tata AIA 4690 4268 3308 3134 2446 -1%
Private Total 198048 139951 90063 77183 61137 -21%
LIC of India 80944 64750 30784 77184 102127 4%
Industry 278992 204701 120847 154367 163264 -10%
Source: Insurance Handbook, 2018-19

Table-8 speaks a lot about the quality of servicing of the (35%), Kotak Mahindra (28%) and Aegon Religare (31%)
insurance companies. Certain important facts revealed by showing exceptional improvement.
the data can be mentioned as under:
Y The insurers which are bank promoted and procure
Y There are far too many complaints against the policies primarily through their partner banks have
insurance companies in each financial year. In 2018-19, reduced the number of complaints remarkably. Even the
total number of registered complaints was more than companies who sell products through digital channels
2,65,000. That is just too much for an industry aspiring have been able to control the customer complaints. This
to be world class.
only proves that it is not necessary that only agents can
Y Over the last five years, most of the private insurers have offer post sales services effectively and promote
been able to reduce the number of customer complaints customer satisfaction.
quite significantly. The last column is arrived at by using
Y Private insurers need to improve customer servicing
the appropriate excel functions. The insurers who have further. It is found that they are responsible for 37% of
reduced complaints have a negative annualised growth the complaints while they have about 30% market
rate. We find that 18 out of 23 private insurers have share in the industry.
reduced number of complaints over the years.
Y LIC of India and four private insurers namely, Bharti Settlement of claims
Axa, IDBI Federal, India First, Sahara and Shriram have
One yardstick to measure the standard of servicing of a life
seen increase in the number of complaints received
insurer is how quickly it can settle claims. Let us put focus
against them. LIC, the market leader, who depends on
on death claims here as settlement of maturity claims is no
tied agents in servicing its large number of customers, issue these days thanks to the facilities available to all the
has seen their customer complaints increasing at a insurers to make payment through NEFT (National Electronic
slender 4% annualised rate. Since, LIC is the market Fund Transfer). If the insurers can obtain bank particulars
leader with more than 70% market share, it is expected
of the customers in time, all maturity claims can be settled
that they motivate their agents to provide post sales on time. But, settlement of death claims requires real
services to the customers more effectively, so that the
customer sensitivity. Table-7 shows the time for which the
customer complaints for the entire industry comes death claims are pending with the insurers. Table-7 also
down.
shows the percentage of claims repudiated/rejected by the
Y All top private insurers have significantly reduced insurers. Since this is an extremely important indicator of
annualised deceleration rate of complaints with HDFC servicing quality, we can see the performance of all the
Life (28%), SBI Life (18%), Max Life (25%), Bajaj Allianz insurers.

26 The Insurance Times, October 2021