Devika Iyer

I am the chief product officer of Varunashree Life Insurance Company Limited, a fictional Mumbai-based life insurer listed on the NSE and BSE and promoted by Varunashree Bank Limited, which owns 51.4 per cent. In the year to March 2026 we wrote ₹17,250 crore of gross premium and ₹4,120 crore of annualised premium equivalent, managed assets of ₹1,26,400 crore and earned a value of new business margin of 25 per cent. About three-fifths of our new business comes through bank branches, most of them our promoter's; the rest comes from 38,000 agents, brokers and our own digital channel.

My team of 140 designs every retail product we sell: term cover, fixed-return and participating savings plans, unit-linked plans and annuities. The Appointed Actuary certifies pricing, and underwriting and claims have their own leaders, but the shape of the promise is mine: who a product is for, how it is explained, what the customer receives if they stop paying and how a distributor is paid for selling it. I reached this job through twenty years on every side of that promise: valuing pension schemes in Chennai, pricing policies at an early private insurer, managing a bank's insurance counter and running claims for a microfinance lender's 2.1 million borrowers.

The question I put to each product is what happens in its fifth year. When I became chief product officer in April 2021, more than a fifth of our regular-premium customers stopped before their second premium, and complaints alleging mis-selling ran at 41 for every 10,000 new policies. Thirteenth-month persistency is now 85.2 per cent and those complaints are down to 17 per 10,000. We got there by selling less of some things to some people, and I would make the same choices again.

Current focus

I am preparing a board proposal for a deferred annuity with a return-of-premium option, aimed at self-employed customers who will never have an employer pension. It raises hard questions about long-dated interest-rate risk and how much of it we can hedge.

Conversations I welcome

I am not looking to leave Varunashree. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed, consumer-facing company with no insurance-distribution link to my employer, joining its Risk Management and Stakeholders Relationship Committees. My employer's board would need to consent, and a conflicts review would come first; within those limits I could commit about twenty-five days a year. I also accept a few invitations to speak to product, actuarial and consumer-protection audiences.