Zuno General Insurance sees retail health growing faster than group business

Zuno General Insurance, formerly Edelweiss General Insurance, will submit a plan to Irdai for bringing its expenses of management (EoM) down to 30% of its gross written premium within three years.

Irdai in March imposed a limit of 30% of gross written premium as EoM for general insurers. The new guidelines on the same came into effect from April 1, 2023.

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The current EoM of Zuno General Insurance, which is Edelweiss Financial Services’ youngest business, stands over 30%.

“We are just five years old. There are insurance companies that are 14-15-years old and are not under the 30% EoM. On an average, companies have taken 8-10 years to reach the EoM mark of 30%. We will have to submit a plan before the regulator to bring our EoM down to 30% in the next three years, and we are in the process of doing that,” Zuno General Insurance MD and CEO Shanai Ghosh told FE.

The company expects its retail health business to grow faster than that of the group health. “We think this trend will continue for the next three years. Because group health is already growing at a fairly robust rate,” Ghosh said.

The company is eyeing to sell around 10% of its total number of motor insurance policies for private cars under usage-based insurance within the next two years.

Zuno GI was the first in the country to launch usage-based insurance using mobile telematics and has been developing this category since 2020. Last year, the company launched SWITCH, an on-demand motor insurance product based on mobile telematics.

The general insurer had started its operations in February 2018. Edelweiss General Insurance rebranded itself as Zuno General Insurance in February this year. The company believes the new identity will help it resonate with the millennial and GenZ audience and communicate its position as a digital insurer.

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“We intend to break even by the end of FY26,” Ghosh said.

The insurer currently has close to 2,000 agents, and it is planning to more than double the agent strength in the current fiscal. Notably, for a general insurance company, agency is the largest channel for retail health business.

The company’s gross written premium for the last financial year grew 52.92% year-on-year to 533.49 crore.