A study on factors influencing claims in general insurance business in India

Purpose - The fact that complaints regarding general insurance claims are three times as numerous as those of life insurance claims suggests that claims behaviour of general insurers be investigated to minimize operating losses and ensure operational excellence. This paper seeks to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach - Study of variance and factor analysis has been undertaken to achieve the objective of identifying factors which govern claims in general insurance business. In order to understand the dependency of claims over the sectors and segments, statistical hypothesis testing along with cross tab analysis has been conducted. The study also evaluates the relationship of these factors over the sectors and segments by running a multiple regression. Findings - An empirical result of the study proves that there exists an association between type of sectors, i.e. public and private and segments of insurance namely fire, marine and miscellaneous. The study also suggests a claim projection model for the general insurance players. Research limitations/implications - Exclusion of specialized players due to the reason being new entrants and in order to maintain common parlance of sectors may be a limitation to this study. Originality/value - The study recommends that insurance players should not treat the claims settlement strategies in isolation of segments. The claims projection model as suggested in the study may prove to be extremely helpful in projecting the claims and in turn reduce the increasing underwriting losses.