Insurance industry is very unique due to its risk accepting appetite and it welcomes the risks happily in exchange of premium. Rather, insurers are always in search of risks to underwrite & are always ready to provide the best possible service at the hour of need. A better definition of insurance would be- " not risk accepting but resilience provider to the insured in the hour of emergency, giving the strength to bounce back."

Aside this, insurers needs to have an inside look in its underwriting & claims management practices. Motor insurance constitute a big chunk of all the underwritten portfolios by insurers and so is the claims in the same segment. Although majority of the claims are of retail nature. But the numbers of claims reported are hefty which must be a cause of major concern for insurers. More to worry about is that there is no limit of claims in a policy year, no effect of claims on renewal of insurance apart from a minimal NCB . Why can not coverage/claim limit on second claim onwards be automatically reduced after one claim is reported in a policy year. There have been cases where even 5-6 claim are being settled in tie-up claims in a single policy year with zero dep cap and still the Liability of the insurer remains full till the expiry of the policy with no limit on further numbers of claims. We need to look world over practices of insurance where insurance is better priced & very well accounted for on renewal of the same next year based on claims experience which is worriedly missing in India & hence bleeding the insurers.

Even it has been observed that insueres are losing premium due to NCB also since in numberless cases NCB is given at the time of issuing policy because claims are anyway being settled after Supreme Court judgement on NCB and other wrongly given NCB cases are gone unnoticed for the policy year & next year next slab of NCB is given causing more losses on account of wrong NCB given & hence undue claim settlement.

In auto-tie ups, Dealers are given upper hand in policy coverages vis-a-vis other underwriting channels. ICR auto-tie ups is another point to be considered. Although manipulation of claims can never be ruled out throughout the industry, but still auto tie-up angles can not be overlooked at all being the biggest portfolio. Survey of vehicles are done without meeting the insured/driver in workshops due to which actual facts related to the accident don't come to light which in many cases could alter the status of claim liability. All the paper work are done by the dealer staff itself . Surveyos's fee criteria in Motor Department, though not a big issue but still to be at par with other departments i.e based on assessed amount not on estimate which is again double the amount of assesed in numberless cases.

To conclude, in order to overcome underwriting losses, industry needs to take a tough stand while underwriting & same will automatically reflect in claims management. It is more urgent because it is a well known fact that Insurance industry by and large are running on assessts not on underwriting surplus/profits which is not regular event ironically.