Mumbai: Private insurance companies are shelling out huge amounts as incentives and gifts to their distributors also known as corporate agents in a bid to ramp up sales despite regulator Irdai’s strict regulations around such kickbacks. As per the documents accessed by The Free Press Journal, it was found that ICICI Lombard General Insurance has spent a huge amount between 2012 and 2014 to woo its corporate agents.
These documents, which have also been tweeted by an independent media professional, Dharmesh Thakkar, brings to light gold coins and foreign trips offered by ICICI Lombard to its agents. Top executives of the insurer have approved gold coins weighing 20 gms, 10 gms, 8 gms and 5 gms as part of Diwali gifts to banks officials, who are also promoting the insurer’s policies.
The documents also revealed that the insurer has offered gold coins to officials in its ‘travel insurance partner’ companies such as Air India. ICICI Lombard has also given away an iPhone to an executive in BMW Bavaria Motors as a Diwali gift. ‘Gift packs’ including vouchers amounting to crores was offered to various motor dealers.
Thakkar has tweeted, “#InsuranceGate all expense paid junkets sponsored @ICICILombard of Rs1.37 crore to Hong Kong and Macau and Rs 86.87 lacs to Paris with approval of management for getting insurance business #financialcorruptpractises.”
Emails sent to ICICI Lombard did not elicit any reply. It has to be noted that most of these huge payments are approved by the company’s top executives. Apart from gifts, the insurer has been sponsoring fully-paid foreign and domestic trips to the executives of housing finance companies like L&T Housing Finance and PNB Housing Finance. These paid trips that cost the company around Rs 9 crore per year, are offered to large groups.
Most of these sponsored trips are to London, Paris, Prague, Paris, Vienna, Italy and Istanbul. PNB Housing Finance did not comment to this story. In some cases, the insurer has paid for trips of not just executives but also their family members. The regulator on several occasions has found many insurers resorting to such activities and have penalised them for violation of Clause 21 of Guidelines on Licensing of Corporate Agents. In 2017, ICICI Prudential Life had been fined for resorting in such wrongdoings by the regulator.
