Shriram General Insurance to open new branches

Shriram General Insurance is planning to expand its operations in ‘C’ and ‘D’ tier cities, with plans to open 50 new branches over the next 12 months, a top official said. After this expansion, the private general insurer expects 25 per cent of its overall revenues to come from ‘C’ and ‘D’ class cities in 2019-20. At present, in terms of revenues, ‘C’ cities bring only 10 per cent of overall revenues. This proposed expansion, which is expected in the next 12 months, will take the company’s overall branch network to about 210 branches from the current level of 162, taking the share of ‘C’ and ‘D’ cities in overall branch network to about 50 per cent, Neeraj Prakash, Managing Director, SGI, told. As on date, SGI has only about 47 branches in ‘C’ cities, accounting for 27 per cent share of the overall branch network. Most of the expansion into ‘C’ and ‘D’ cities will happen in eastern India and in Gujarat and Maharashtra, said Prakash. While ‘D’ class cities are those with a population up to 15,000 people, ‘C’ class cities have a population ranging between 15,000 and 50,000. SGI will, next year, look to recruit 5,000 new employees, and increase the IRDAI-registered agents by 7,000 in 2019-20 so that the total number of agents goes up to 25,000. Currently, SGI has 17,000 IRDAI-registered agents, which will go up to 18,000 by the end of this financial year.