National, October 5, 2024: Mutual Global Insurance Broking Pvt. Ltd. – a Bengaluru-headquartered, IRDA-licensed insurance broker, in collaboration with ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd. – one of the leading private sector general insurance companies in India, recently organized a mega event titled ‘Builders’ Meet’ for its existing and prospective clients, including majorly business owners and operators within the infrastructure and real estate industry. The event was primarily aimed at spreading awareness about the various emerging trends, opportunities and products across the nation’s general insurance space, which could possibly benefit builders/developers in the near future.
The single-day event, which was held at Welcomhotel by ITC Hotels, Richmond Road, Bengaluru, featured ICICI Lombard as its exclusive knowledge partner. The event was attended by Mr. Anand Singhi, Chief – Retail & Government Business, Mr. Gaurav Arora – Chief UW, Claims & Property, Mr. Faiz Ahmad – Vice President, SME Agency and several other senior dignitaries from the Claims, Underwriting, VAS and Product teams of ICICI Lombard.
Mr. Bishnu Charan Hotta, Co-Founder & Director, Mutual Global Insurance Broking Private Limited, delivering the welcome address at the event, commented, “This pioneering Builders’ Meet event is our forum to bring together key stakeholders of the nation’s infra, realty and insurance ecosystems. This initiative comes at a time when the general insurance market in India is witnessing substantial year-on-year growth, alongside constantly increasing penetration of property and infrastructure-related insurance policies. Through this event, we are attempting to create awareness on future-facing game changers like surety bond insurance, which is poised to enhance capacity of our country’s infra contractors towards enhancing their execution capabilities, thereby supporting and bolstering India’s infrastructure development projects and goals. Additionally, with the support of our event partner ICICI Lombard, we are facilitating valuable interactive sessions relating to title insurance, claims settlement best practices, impact of detariffication of insurance policy wordings, among other relevant topics”.
Through its value-added sessions and expert-led conversations, this unique event helped in highlighting the nuances of: i) surety bond insurance (which promises to boost capabilities of infrastructure clients and contractors and help them in planning and managing their business operations efficiently), and ii) title insurance (which protects or insures landowners and property developers against losses incurred due to any property disputes or defects in the property’s title).
The event also witnessed an enlightening panel discussion-cum-interactive chat session with participation from seasoned business leaders and experts. During the panel, Col. (Retd.) Milan Khurana, Former Executive Director at Prestige Group emphasized on the importance of infrastructure in making India the third largest economy in the world. “Broadly speaking, infrastructure can be categorized into two buckets – economic infrastructure (facilities like roads, airports, railways, etc.) and social infrastructure (education, health and housing). Both of these are critical in fuelling India’s ambition of becoming a $5 trillion economy,” he added.
Commenting on the recently-approved (by IRDAI) de-tariffication of policy wordings, another panellist Mr. Chidananda NP, Head – Shared Services, RMZ Corp. said, “De-tariffication of wordings has come as a great opportunity, and not as a threat for the Indian insurance industry. It is helping today’s service providers and insurance companies in customizing their products and creating a sense of true competition in the market, while simultaneously increasing the responsibility even more for brokers”.
Mr. Kedar Nath Choudhury, Group CFO of Stellapps Technologies and Founder, 2050 Healthcare opined that in the years to come, there shall be a growing opportunity for start-ups enabled with advanced technologies like Blockchain, Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) to completely transform how the construction industry operates.
While fostering open dialogues and diverse perspectives, the conclusive consensus that came out of this event was that India’s infrastructure and insurance sector must work hand-in-hand to support the nation’s economic growth and infrastructure-led progress. Notably, Mutual Global Insurance Broking has, over the years, positioned itself as one of the leading names in facilitating insurances of numerous acclaimed engineering and infrastructure projects across the country, including public highway, tower and construction projects worth thousands of crores. The company is also currently one of the leading channel partners for ICICI Lombard in India.