HNB General Insurance heads on triumphant stepping

Wednesday, 25 May 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Looking back at the corporate journey of HNB General Insurance Ltd. (HNBGI) following the segregation in 2015, shows a growth through both empirical and numerical statistics. In this sense, turning a new entity in to a multi-billion rupee business is never easy, especially in an industry as highly competitive as insurance with a number of players battling it out there in the market. In such an industry, HNBGI has shown an encouraging growth in the past quarter.

Despite many challenges faced in terms of segregation, the company has always followed its policy of delivering the promise to its customers. The ethos of the company is based on customer centric business growth whereby equal focus is placed on delivering value to customers as well as the other stakeholders. Sharing views on the growth of the company, HNBGI Chief Business Officer Chandana L. Aluthgama mentions that the company’s key focus is on providing the best solutions to the customers whilst safeguarding business ethics.

HNBGI is a fully owned subsidiary of HNB Assurance PLC (HNBA) which is backed by Hatton National Bank PLC. This immense financial strength sets the company on a strong footing. The cross functional collaboration of various business functions of the organisation leads to a spur of innovation and yield greater results of profitability. The top line and bottom line financial gains over the first quarter of 2016 shows a sound growth providing favourable returns to the group.

The success of the company relies on the multi-pronged sales structure and on the key products development strategies. This framework provides a robust platform of evaluating customer needs and developing customer-centric solutions that best suits their protection needs. Over the last five months, HNBGI has reconfigured its infrastructure to provide speedy service to the customer through the collaboration of certain business functions enabling the company to benefit from economies of scale.

In reviewing the product portfolio of the company, Motor-Guard Extra has been a top notch product due to nature of the product and its unique benefits offered. This has also been a competitive market differentiator. Chandana, further mentions that the sales force of the company is considered to be one of the core strengths in tapping into new market spaces and a value addition to the core business.

The company has invested on web-based technologies and on other digital platforms to automate branch operations and the underwriting process to provide more efficient and effective solutions to its customers. Special focus is given to social media and mobile based platforms to communicate with customers on a regular basis as well as to attend to their needs.

HNBGI has received a Fitch rating of A (lka) by Fitch Ratings Lanka and the parent company HNBA is rated within the top 100 brands and the top 100 companies in Sri Lanka by LMD.