HYDERABAD: Bharti AXA General Insurance, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and AXA, on Tuesday said it has logged 46% growth in its gross written premium at Rs 1,586 crore for the first half of financial year 2019-20 as against Rs 1,087 crore in the year-ago period.

Commenting on the business performance in the first half of 2019-20, Sanjeev Srinivasan, managing director and CEO, Bharti AXA General Insurance, said, “The healthy double-digit growth in the first half of this fiscal across all product lines and channels, has been achieved by enhancing distribution bandwidth, forging strategic business alliances and diversifying product lines and channels. We expect to grow better than industry in the second half of 2019-20 as well.’’

Increasing distribution network, new partnerships along with prudent product pricing have been key drivers for the company’s growth in both retail and corporate business, he added. He said all product segments saw robust growth, led by commercial lines, motor, crop and health insurance. The company’s focus on segments like SME and MSME yielded a 79% growth in the commercial lines segment.

Motor, health and travel helmed the growth for retail channel which registered 38% increase in revenue in the first half of this financial year over same period in the last financial year.

“We are confident that the focus on multiple bancassurance partnerships, emerging markets, segment diversification, digitization, better expense management, and customer-centricity will help the company yield stronger growth and a profitable performance across all key metrics of the business by the end of this financial year,’’ Srinivasan added.

Source: The Times of India