Chief Executive Officer / India
The fuller account changed the enterprise choice
- Employees
- 580
- Eight executives reporting to the CEO
- FY 2025–26 gross written premium
- ₹960 crore
- Not revenue, profit or freely available cash
- Annual enterprise operating-expense plan
- ₹124 crore
- Approved by the board for FY 2026–27
Decisions & consequences
01Withdrawing the expansion inference I had built on treatment episodes
In 2020 I supported a proposal for discovery work across six districts. The summary used fourteen thousand treatment episodes from an authorised aggregate research account as though they represented fourteen thousand distinct potential customers. The underlying account identified ten thousand adults, with some people appearing in more than one episode. I had allowed activity to become people in the commercial interpretation. Neither figure, by itself, established demand for our policy or a population suitable for underwriting.
The expansion sponsor wanted to preserve the scale because the larger programme offered a more visible regional ambition. Research and actuarial colleagues challenged the inference. I withdrew the interpretation I had supported and asked for the decision to be rebuilt around the questions the evidence could actually address. We did not use the aggregate counts to approach individual patients, and the programme did not confer access to identifiable clinical records. Privacy and professional review remained conditions of any further research.
As COO I recommended a two-district discovery programme costing ₹1.8 crore over six months, which the CEO approved. The remaining four districts stayed outside that initial commitment. The narrower work separated customer understanding, affordability, distribution and servicing questions from underwriting assessment. It was not a promise to open two branches or a forecast of ten thousand new policies. The revised scope gave the enterprise a defined next inquiry without pretending that the corrected population count settled the commercial case.
The change disappointed colleagues who had prepared for a larger programme and required me to explain why my own summary had been misleading. I did not describe the smaller commitment as money saved against an approved six-district investment, because that wider investment had not been sanctioned. The result was a more honest basis for the next decision. It taught me that a chief operating sponsor must preserve the meaning of evidence as it moves into a short recommendation, especially when the larger number makes the proposal easier to support.
Holding a dividend recommendation that began with the bank balance
In 2023 an initial shareholder-distribution discussion highlighted a ₹90 crore bank balance and proposed a ₹30 crore dividend. The cash figure was a real part of the fictional company’s position, but the short paper did not establish distributable profit, the timing of policyholder obligations or the relevant capital and legal conditions. Subtracting the proposed payment from cash would have produced another number, not a sufficient conclusion about whether the distribution should proceed.
CFO Saira Vezqlani and chief actuary Devika Qerqlavi asked for a fuller account of financial resources, liabilities and projected demands. I withheld my recommendation and took the unresolved questions to the board, which deferred the proposal. This was not a unilateral CEO declaration about the company’s legal ability to pay a dividend, nor evidence that the insurer was insolvent. The issue was that the proposed commitment had acquired a confident headline before the necessary assessments had been brought together.
I approved ₹75 lakh over ten weeks for the supporting analysis and board reporting within the authorised programme. Finance, actuarial, risk and legal colleagues retained their professional responsibilities. The work examined the timing and uncertainty of obligations alongside the financial position, with assumptions and limitations visible. It did not convert an actuarial estimate into cash or treat every asset as immediately available. Any subsequent distribution remained subject to the proper company decision and applicable requirements.
The shareholders did not receive the proposed payment on the original timetable. I accepted the need to explain that delay rather than make a premature recommendation sound decisive. The programme did not establish an invented recovery, profit increase or permanent ban on distributions. Its result was a decision process in which the board could examine resources beside obligations instead of treating one balance as the whole enterprise account. For me, the CEO responsibility was to make the professional challenge effective before the proposed payment became a commitment everyone assumed had already been justified.
Keeping an assisted route in the digital service programme
A 2025 service proposal would have moved a set of routine policy tasks primarily into a digital channel and reduced the staffed route around it. The operating case expected more people to complete requests without assistance. That direction could improve convenience for some customers, but the first investment account treated the availability of a digital journey as though it established the ability of every intended user to complete it.
In a selected exercise with forty-eight adult participants, seventeen completed the defined tasks independently and thirty-one needed assistance at one or more steps. These observations were not a population estimate or a judgement about the participants’ general competence. They concerned the particular tasks and setting. I asked operations to examine where assistance was needed and how a policyholder could obtain it without being passed repeatedly between a digital process and a team unable to take ownership of the request.
We retained a staffed route and funded ₹1.1 crore over nine months for assisted-service capacity, handover design and review alongside the digital work. The programme did not let an assisting colleague determine coverage or give medical advice outside their authority. Claims, medical and privacy owners remained responsible for their respective decisions. The digital channel continued to be developed; it was no longer presented as the only credible route simply because that assumption improved the initial expense forecast.
The revised programme carried a continuing service cost that the earlier proposal had understated. I did not claim that the additional spending proved higher retention or reduced complaints, because those outcomes had not been measured. The decision preserved a usable alternative and a more realistic operating account while further evidence was gathered. It changed the enterprise question from whether a task existed online to whether the person could complete the service they needed through a supported route. That is a leadership choice about the obligations the insurer carries, not merely a preference between two interface designs.