A life insurance product is judged in its fifth year, not at the counter where it is sold, so I design for the customer who is still paying.
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.
Older bank customers moved off a plan that did not suit them
From July 2022, customers over sixty buying through our promoter's branches could take a long-pay, fixed-return savings plan only after an affordability check and a recorded verification call in their own language. APE from that segment fell ₹290 crore in a year, and its thirteenth-month persistency rose from 66 to 84 per cent.
Underwriting done before the death claim
Nurse-led tele-medical interviews for bank-sourced term proposals above ₹25 lakh cut the share of early death claims we repudiated for non-disclosure from 19 per cent in 2021–22 to 6 per cent in 2025–26, at roughly ₹1,450 of extra cost per policy issued.
Term cover for people without a payslip
A term plan underwritten on GST returns and consented bank-statement data has issued 1.12 lakh policies to small traders since February 2024. Protection has grown from 9 to 16 per cent of our APE since 2021–22.
Fairer early exits, paid for in the open
When higher early surrender values arrived in 2024, we moved about 30 per cent of first-year commission into trails rather than cut customers' returns by the 0.6 percentage points first proposed. Margin on those plans fell from 34 to 31 per cent, and one partner bank stepped away for nine months.
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.
