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Devika IyerChief Product Officer · Essays & perspective
Portrait of Devika Iyer
Devika Iyer
Chief Product Officer · India

A selected perspective

Protection and underwriting5 min read

Devika Iyer

The industry explains low term cover in India as a failure of awareness. For most self-employed households the obstacle is that insurers cannot verify their income, so the remedy lies in underwriting design rather than advertising.

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Open to Board appointments · Speaking invitations

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The portfolio

From idea to consequence.

I

Taking a long-pay savings plan off the counter for older bank customers

In early 2022 our largest product was a non-participating savings plan that paid a fixed annual income after a premium-paying term of up to twelve years.

View the case study ↗
II

Underwriting term cover at issue instead of investigating after a death

By 2022 Varunashree Bank's mobile app and branches offered our term plan to selected bank customers as a pre-approved product: cover of up to ₹1 crore with no medical evidence, priced on the bank's knowledge of the customer.

View the case study ↗
III

Sharing the cost of fairer surrender values with distributors

In 2024 the regulator's revised framework for life insurance products required higher surrender values in the early years of non-linked savings policies.

View the case study ↗

A promise to a household should still make sense on the day they can no longer keep their side of it.

The journal

Further reading.

  1. 02

    Savings product design5 min read

    Show the surrender value before the maturity value

    Savings policy illustrations in India lead with the maturity benefit, which many customers will never receive because they stop early. Putting the early-exit value first would change how products are sold, how they are designed and who pays for fairness.

  2. 03

    Persistency5 min read

    A lapsed policy is a product defect

    Indian life insurers treat persistency as a sales and service measure, chased with renewal calls after customers have already decided to stop. Most lapses are designed in at the point of sale, so the product team should own them.

Annualised premium equivalent, year to March 2026
₹4,120 Cr
61 per cent through bank branches, 21 per cent through agents
Thirteenth-month persistency, FY2025-26
85.2%
Up from 78.4 per cent in FY2021-22
Mis-selling complaints per 10,000 new policies
17
Down from 41 when I became chief product officer

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.

Beyond the page

The record behind the perspective.

In the boardroom

  • Kuralvazhi Financial Literacy FoundationNon-executive director of a not-for-profit Section 8 company; chair of its programme committee · 2022–present

Formation

  • Bachelor of Science in MathematicsMarudham College of Arts and Science · 1998
  • Master of Science in StatisticsPazhaverkadu Institute of Statistics · 2000
  • Executive Post-Graduate Diploma in Management (part-time)Navalur School of Management · 2010
Devika's quarterly report is the paper our committee reads first, because she shows us the cohort that is failing before she shows us the average. When she proposed restricting sales to older customers in our own promoter's branches, she put the lost premium on the first page and let us decide with it in front of us.
Ravindra BhosekarFictional independent director and chair of the policyholder protection committee, Varunashree Life Insurance Company Limited
The full record ↗

Contact

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.

  • Board appointments
  • Speaking invitations
Write to Devika Contact page