Mr. Mehta is the founder member and the first person to join DLF Pramerica. He has been associated with the initiative since 2006, when he was appointed Chief Representative for The Prudential Insurance Company of America’s Representative Office in India. He took charge as the CEO of DLF Pramerica Life Insurance Co. Ltd., when it was formed in 2007 as a Joint Venture between DLF Limited, a leading real estate development company in India, and Prudential International Insurance Holdings, Ltd. (PIIH), a fully-owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial, Inc. (PFI), a financial services leader headquartered in the U.S.

Before joining DLF Pramerica Life Insurance Co., he was the Senior Vice President - Business Development & Strategic Planning at Max New York Life Insurance. Between 1997-2003, Mr. Mehta worked for McKinsey & Company leading projects across a wide spectrum of industries in India, South Korea, Brazil and Thailand.

Mr. Mehta obtained his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

He spoke candidly with Harsh Roongta and Bienu Vaghela of ApnaInsurance.com at

DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon on various facets of industry and what it entails being a relatively new player in the arena.

Speaking on his endeavour, Mehta says, "We would like to raise the standards of life insurance in the country by providing high quality insurance advice and protection products to our customers."
He adds, “Looking back at the past two years of the inception, we have made systematic efforts to standardize the functioning and make it simpler. We are coming from the phase when there was no illustration, now it is mandatory. If you look at the structure of the illustration now, it is has been standardized. Now there is considerable activity taking place in the Life Council to simplify illustration and the functioning. But the main issue of multiple charges still remains. The customer has to put all the things together, so that the net impact of all this is clearly shown. So coming from an era when Unit Linked was gaining ground with different expression of the charges, it has moved on to become more systematic. Not only names, definitions are also being standardized. The proposal has been firmed up and IRDA has to comment on that. The parameters are completely fixed. By the very nature, ULIPS or endowment products are difficult to compare. But lot of work is happening to make the most and it is better for us, better for the industry.”

Since you are a relatively new entrant with limited suit of products, is it a conscious strategy? Now consumers are looking at what kind of innovative products.

We are a new company and believe in moving step by step. Our approach to building the business from the very beginning has been to develop different distribution channels. It has to be high quality model. We have opened 14 branches right now. We ensure that these are working well for which we are recruiting right kind of persons, training them well so that they can support the product. So it is a step-by-step approach but not a non-aggressive approach. We are looking at what we can achieve in one-two year span.

We are introducing products for agency system and couple of products for third party distributors. Soon we will be refurbishing and re-branding our portfolio.

Coming to markets, they are looking at guarantees and want to make sure that risks are low. There is a latent need for various products. We need to explain the relevance of the protection plan and why it makes sense for customers. We are really focusing on the protection aspect.

As a relatively new player, what have been the challenges vis-à-vis opportunities?

First opportunities, the industry has been there for nearly 8 years and there is lot of learning, which has taken place in the industry. So we did not have to reinvent the wheel on may aspects like what kind of products to launch or how to train our work force? If you think of the industry, which moved from different phases right from first phase, when people were just starting up in early 2000-01. Then phase II involved rapid geographical expansion, and now the market is entering into phase III where some other parameters have become important like how to manage your capital, what are the cost efficiencies and different distribution models etc. so these aspects of the industry are becoming more dominated.

Now talking of challenges, from the very beginning we have designed our channels in the manner, so that they are effective from not just sales point of view but also from capital efficiency and the cost efficiency that we operate in. The full value of this advantage can be seen once we scale up.

So how will consumers find you different?

Let’s talk about the distribution channels; the quality of sales force that we are building is one among the best. Being a small company we are very flexible and nimble in responding to a third party need. We customize products according to their demand. From a consumer’s perspective, we are focusing ourselves from investment to protection. There is hierarchy of customer’s needs like first you have to address the protection need, second long-term saving aspect, third the investment return and fourth the tax advantage. In this hierarchy, customers see lot of value.

We do not have term policy but we have family income policy, which is a pure protection plan, but it is structured differently. Moreover we incentivise our sales force based on the sum assured and not only on the premium collected thus ensuring that consumers are sold an appropriate product.

Moreover, we have put all our plans systematically. We are encouraged by the fact that our brand receptivity has been pretty high. Till now we have opened our branches in NCR and Punjab, which is a conscious strategy because we wanted to start on a strong footing. So there has been good acceptability.

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