Star Health Insurance to add 29-30 bancassurance partners by H1FY26: Biju Menon

Biju Menon, CBO & ED, Star Health Insurance

Star Health and Allied Insurance will add 29-30 bancassurance partners by the first half of the next financial year to increase the fresh business, Biju Menon, Executive Director & Chief Business Officer told Moneycontrol in an interview.

Currently, the company has 71 bancassurance partners including state-owned banks, private banks and non-banking finance companies. Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, IDFC First Bank, L&T Finance, Tata Capital Housing Finance and Samaan Housing Finance (India Bulls), among others, are some of their current partners.

In the third quarter of the current financial year, the company has signed bancassurance partnerships with Neogrowth, RBL Bank, Niwas Housing Finance and Northern Arc Finance Ltd.

Menon said that in first half of FY25, around 15 percent fresh business contribution had come from the bancassurance vertical, and that the company wants to double this in next three years.

Further, the company also wants to increase their brokers to 800, from 600 currently, Menon said.

Edited excerpts:

How many new bancassurance partners have you added in Q3?

Recently we have added new partners, which took the total count to 71 and our target is 100 partners. Some of the prominent large players are in the pipeline, which is expected to close at the earliest.

In Q3, the company has signed bancassurance partnerships with Neogrowth, RBL Bank, Niwas Housing Finance , and Northern Arc Finance Ltd.

Apart from this, we have recently added Godrej Finance, Credit Saison, and AU Finance Bank. All these partnerships were done in maybe 15 to 20 days.

By when will you be able to add the remaining partners you have targeted?

We are targeting by first half of next financial year, adding 29-30 partners more.

How much growth are you expecting with new partnerships?

We have a good number of partners, and the partnerships with the banks are built upon the mutual goals of getting proper revenue growth and customer satisfaction - that is our primary motive with all the partnership we are associated with.

The bancassurance vertical contributed approximately 14-15 percent towards fresh business in H1 of 2025. We are planning to  double this in the next three years.

How do you see the likelihood of IRDAI bringing norms to reduce bancassurance with the parent bank?

It is welcome news for us. We started as a company not promoted by any bank and that is another good opportunity to look at tie-ups with more parent companies or bank promoted companies.

We have a huge opportunity of getting that new partnership and if the IRDAI decision comes, then it will definitely give entry to some of these large PSU or private banks and thus we will able to add value to the bank partners, bringing in the revenue and seamless customer service to the customers.

How many PSU banks are in the pipeline for bancassurance for the rest of this financial year?

We have four banks, one we are working (with) very closely, it is expected anytime. Three more are expected to come in and we are planning to get four additional partners additional.

Apart from banca, are there any plans to increase agency and broker partners?

Agency, we are continuing the recruitment. We are adding more and more agents on a regular basis. Currently, we have 600 brokers and that number is to be taken to 800 brokers.

Which geographies are you planning on going ahead with?

We are targeting deeper penetration into the rural market, which is not yet penetrated as well as the urban and semi-urban locations. We are targeting the existing PSU banks. We have close to 38,000 branches of PSUs currently that we are servicing and we have not covered all the 38,000 yet. We have covered around 25,000 branches. We are targeting those currently useful to penetrate tier-II and tier-III (cities) and rural areas. We are also targeting the cooperative banks - Grameen Cooperative Banks and RRBs for more tie-ups.

Why is the claim rate high for standalone health insurance companies and what is your company’s ratio?

Claim ratio is increasing because of various reasons such as climatic conditions, the pandemic and various natural calamities, catastrophes. We are looking at it to ensure every customer insured with us is able to settle their claim and there's no kind of a second thought on it.

After the data leak incident in October, what precautions has the company taken?

We have taken all precautions on the IT side and on the company policy servicing so that such incidents will not arise next time and they will be completely arrested.

This incident has not impacted our financials and we have evaluated everything.

Have you replied to the IRDAI’s show cause notice?

We have submitted our reply to the regulator. Questions that they raised about processes, some delays and other stuff. It was business as usual.