After overcoming all the challenges of the last two years, Mr. Sunil Kohli, Dhofar Insurance Company’s CEO, confirmed that his company, and with the full support and confidence of its shareholders, was able to achieve major growth totaled at 14%, till end of September.
He also talked, in this special interview with Al Morakeb Al Ta’mini magazine, about the new trends in the market and the way they were able to embrace them and incorporate them in their services.
* How can you describe the situation of the Insurance sector in past year?
The insurance sector all over the world is undergoing a huge transformation in three major sectors. I believe that we are at a crossroad at this stage, especially with the changes caused by the increased propensity and frequency of the natural catastrophes.
The frequency of the natural catastrophes has changed, especially in the USA and Japan, where we used to believe that the catastrophes’ tendency is rare, as major catastrophes with huge losses are affecting the markets every two to three years.
This is also applicable to the MENA region, as a lot of us thought that the Natural Catastrophes are absent in the region. But what we’re seeing recently, is more of these catastrophes which led to huge losses and affected the insurance and reinsurance companies and by that the pricing was also affected. Therefore, we are trying to absorb this impact and pass it on to the customer in a better way.
The second challenge is the increasing Risk claims, especially in the Marine Side worldwide. And because of the huge losses of this sector more than 6 underwriters in Lloyd’s stopped dealing with Marine business. Due to that the capacity of the marine sector decreased and the cost went up.
The Boeing problems also created a huge challenge to this sector, as it generated huge claims to the aviation insurers, and they are now reducing their capacity and increasing their prices.
* You believe that the local market is not as soft as it was?
Definitely, especially for the property, marine and aviation lines of businesses, which became stronger.
* The new accounting standard, IFRS 17, is facing the insurance sector globally and regionally…
– Are there any specific drawbacks and observations about this new standard?
– As a company, where are you from applying it?
This standard will be a major disruptor for the insurance sector all over the world. Because it will change the way the insurance business is done, and companies need to understand carefully how it works, and the differences between this standard and the ones we used to use previously. When you understand this gap, you will be able to upgrade your systems and the way you work.
Certain lines of business, for example, under IFRS 17 will become uneconomical for some companies, and this, in my opinion, will put them under a lot of pressures. Therefore, I believe we should collectively look into this new situation and try to find ways to deal with it, in order to overcome all its obstacles.
* Technology has strongly invaded the insurance world, as well as other service and production sectors.
– What are the new transformations that the technology brought into this sector?
Digitalization became nowadays one of the main keys for a company to survive in this market. It is the time to embrace the new transformations in the technology sector, first when it comes to providing the customers with the ability to buy their products in the easiest and fastest way.
In addition to that, the new technology helped us to be in touch with all our customers and clients at all times and with no time, and by that fulfill their requests directly at a click of a button.
These technologies also facilitate for us the way we reach out to our clients and update them with our latest products, especially when it comes to microinsurance products to small and medium businesses.
* What are your company’s achievements in 2019 at all levels?
We’re focusing this year on customer services with technology adaptation, therefore we changing our IRP platform to update it with the latest technology transformations. And we initiated an inhouse customer service with a call center trying to answer all our clients’ questions.
In addition to that we started developing and introducing new Cyber products into the market. We also managed to launch the credit insurance policy.
All this helped us to achieve a 14 per cent growth (unaudited) in our profits for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, and the total premium for the period reached RO 36.12 million, which represents 9 per cent growth over previous year premium of RO 32.99 million in the same period last year. And the net underwriting result was a profit of RO 5.68 million compared to a profit of RO 6.45 million over the same period last year.
