Top 5 Best General, Health and Motor Insurance Company for 2018
Top 5 Best General, Health and Motor Insurance Company – 2018. Life is full of unexpected events and risks. That is what it makes so interesting and exciting. But at times these unexpected events are irreversible and can really set you back. General Insurance or non-life insurance is the sector, which caters to the insurance needs connected to such events other than the risk on your life itself. General Insurance includes, vehicle insurance, health insurance and much more..
As you will be purchasing policies to tide over such difficult situations, in your day to day life, it is good to understand which insurance companies performed well in each insurance sector. That will help you to take informed decisions. IRDA ‘s Annual report 2016-17 provides a good insight to the performance of general insurance companies in India.
General Insurance in India – an overview
The General Insurance market in India is highly dominated by the four public sector insures- National, New India, Oriental and United. The chart given below will give you a clear idea on the split up of the ‘gross direct premium income’ of all the General and Health insurers in India.
| Insurer | Total Premium | Market Share | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | |
| Public Sector Insurers | ||||
| National | 11976.07 | 14237.54 | 12.43% | 11.11% |
| New India | 15149.51 | 19114.69 | 15.72% | 14.92% |
| Oriental | 8314.74 | 10803.34 | 8.63% | 8.43% |
| United | 12250.36 | 16062.8 | 12.71% | 12.54% |
| Sub-Total | 47690.68 | 60218.37 | 49.48% | 47.00% |
| Private Sector Insurers | ||||
| Bajaj Allianz | 5832.15 | 7633.28 | 6.05% | 5.96% |
| Bharti AXA | 1274.42 | 1314.09 | 1.32% | 1.03% |
| Cholamandalam | 2452 | 3133.28 | 2.54% | 2.45% |
| Future Generali | 1555.26 | 1815.5 | 1.61% | 1.42% |
| HDFC ERGO* | 3379.55 | 3964.45 | 3.51% | 3.09% |
| ICICI Lombard | 8090.71 | 10725.2 | 8.39% | 8.37% |
| IFFCO Tokio | 3691.33 | 5563.7 | 3.83% | 4.34% |
| Kotak Mahindra | 3.71 | 82.05 | 0.00% | 0.06% |
| Liberty Videocon | 408.72 | 584.59 | 0.42% | 0.46% |
| Magma HDI | 403.94 | 419.49 | 0.42% | 0.33% |
| Raheja QBE | 28.76 | 58.92 | 0.03% | 0.05% |
| Reliance | 2791.56 | 3935.35 | 2.90% | 3.07% |
| Royal Sundaram | 1694.12 | 2188.78 | 1.76% | 1.71% |
| SBI | 2039.85 | 2604.49 | 2.12% | 2.03% |
| Shriram | 1712.27 | 2102.42 | 1.78% | 1.64% |
| Tata AIG | 2958.56 | 4167.97 | 3.07% | 3.25% |
| Universal Sompo | 903.79 | 1287.23 | 0.94% | 1.00% |
| Sub-Total | 39694.08 | 53804.95 | 41.19% | 41.99% |
| Standalone Health Insurers | ||||
| Aditya Birla | 0 | 54.04 | 0.00% | 0.04% |
| Apollo Munich | 1022.18 | 1301.93 | 1.06% | 1.02% |
| CignaTTK | 143.82 | 221.8 | 0.15% | 0.17% |
| Max Bupa | 476.01 | 593.93 | 0.49% | 0.46% |
| Religare | 503.32 | 726.07 | 0.52% | 0.57% |
| Star Health | 2007.34 | 2960.05 | 2.08% | 2.31% |
| Sub-Total | 4152.67 | 5857.83 | 4.31% | 4.57% |
| Specialized Insurers | ||||
| AIC | 3521.22 | 6979.56 | 3.65% | 5.45% |
| ECGC | 1320.73 | 1267.62 | 1.37% | 0.99% |
| Sub-Total | 4841.95 | 8247.19 | 5.02% | 6.44% |
| Grand Total | 96379.38 | 128128.34 | 100.00% | 100.00% |
General Insurance In India – Segment wise break up
The Motor insurance is the largest general insurance segment with a share of 39.22 percent (43.89 percent in 2015-16). The premium collected was 50250.53 Crores. The premium collection in Health segment was 34,527 crore in 2016-17 with a market share of 26.95%. The complete segment wise analysis is provided in the info-gram provided below.
Top 10 General Insurance Companies – Based on premium income.
The public sector general insurer, New India Insurance Company, top the chart with a premium of 21597.92 crores premium income. The four public sector insurance companies hold the first four positions, followed by ICICI Lombard General Insurance CO Ltd. The info-gram provided below gives the premium income of top 10 companies for the financial years 2015-16 and 2016-17.
Motor Insurance Companies – Ranking based on Premium Income
New India Assurance company tops the chart with 7600.67 crores of premium for the financial year 2016-17. ICICI Lombard is the largest private sector motor insurer which is in the fourth position, pushing Oriental Insurance company (Public Sector) to the fifth position.
General Insurance Companies – Time taken to settle Claim
As the prime duty of the insurance company is to settle claim in a speedy and prompt manner, it is good to analyse the company, based on the time taken to settle the claim amount. The info-gram given below will give you a clear idea on the time taken to settle the claim amount. You can see which companies settled claims within 6 months and which took more than one year to settle claims. ICICI Lombard and Liberty Videocon settled 99% of their claims within a period of six months. On the other hand Sriram took more than one year to settle 22% of their claims.
Now in order to find the top 10 general insurers from the above list, ‘premium income’ and ‘time taken to settle the claim’ were taken together. First, top 10 insurers based on ‘premium income’ was taken and then it was sorted in the order of ‘time taken to settle claim’ from lowest to highest. The resultant list is given below.
General Insurance Companies in India – Repudiation/Rejection of Claims
The percentage of claims settled by the company also is an important factor to be considered. There could be fraudulent claims which cannot be settled by the company and need to be rejected out right. But another chance is that the claim is purposefully rejected by the company irrespective of the genuinity of the material facts. The info-gram given below will give a clear idea on the claim rejection.
Ranking based on the claim repudiation ratio is given below. Facts like ‘ICICI Lombard’ which settles 99 % of the settled claims within a period of 6 months rejects about 9.48 % of the total claims will be hard to digest. 
These charts are self explanatory and will help you to take informed decisions while taking your new policies. As sufficient data is provided to rank your insurer, I am not giving any ranking list for insurers.
Along with the selection of insurer, you should analyse the features of the policies also. Always make sure that the clauses and fine prints will not affect the expected benefits from the policy.
Read More: Best Life Insurance company in 2018 based on claim settlement
Anish L J is a ‘Financial Planner’ and member of Chartered Insurance Institute(CII), London and Insurance Institute of India. He is also a finance, insurance and software consultant. He thoroughly follows the developments in finance, insurance, and other related sectors.
I Ready Your article and I am Very Much Satisfy with this. As in 2021 all the above companies you mentioned are most proffered. I appreciate your efforts.
Thank you for your encouraging words.