Nanayam Vikatan’s false ratings…
Nanayam Vikatan, a fortnightly business magazine in Tamil, has recently started a new article series with title ‘Insurance Rating’. It claims itself as, ratings are there for almost all products, but not available for insurance and hence it took up the job to rate insurance. So far, 3 articles in this series were published.
Nanayam Vikatan says that it wants to rate not only insurance products but also rate the companies and give that weightage to the products’ rating. Some ratings were given to the life insurance companies in its 2nd article based on Claims performance and solvency ratio. It argued that solvency ratio can reflect the health of the company and claims performance can reflect the quality of service and security for policyholders’ money. But in both the ratings LIC had been rated as if a very poor performer. I immediately wrote a letter to the editor pointing out some of the data, but it is to be replied yet. But one of our agents, Mr.Meenakshisundaram of Srirangam BO, called them over phone and inquired about my letter. They sent a reply to him. I would like to expose the biased attitude of Nanayam Vikatan here, both from the articles and the reply.
First in the case of claims performance, the writers argued that they considered only the settled claims because possibility of repudiation is there for pending claims. They took the data pertaining to the quarter ended September 2010, and I don’t know the rationale behind it. But I also took the same data from IRDA, and it contains the repudiation ratio also. Please see the repudiation ratio and the Nanayam Vikatan’s ratings.
There is the possibility of repudiation in pending cases. Right, we accept. But what is the position of claims already repudiated? Nanayam Vikatan’s ratings very openly tells that its ratings are biased and in favour of private insurance companies.
I have pointed out this in my letter. They, in their reply to Meenakshisundaram, argue that if the rejection ratio only is considered, the companies which take long time to process the claims will get better ratings. I never asked them to consider rejection ratio only. Just pointed out another angle and wanted to tell them that their analysis is not exhaustive. The writers are too novice to understand our argument and also to understand the insurance business!
Another rating, which is to value the strength of the insurance companies, considers only the solvency ratio. Here I pointed out that several companies rated with ‘A’ are having very huge losses and hence their rating do not fulfill their aim of valuing the strength. See the table, created by me to compare the profit and loss position and ratings. It explicitly shows that Nanayam Vikatan’s or the writers’ motive is not giving a neutral rating but it is to propagate as if private companies are good.
I also pointed out that expense ratio of private companies for the year 2009-10 is 20.86% whereas LIC’s for the same period is 6.58% and asked which should be considered as efficient. Is policyholders’ money safe after spending one fifth of it? I also pointed out that TATA AIG, rated as ‘A’ grade company by Nanayam Vikatan, was fined in November 2010, for not maintaining its expense ratio. Its expense ratio was 117.28%.
The reply for this argument openly shows the immaturity of the writers. Writers argue that LIC was also fined for not fulfilling rural obligations and considering fines is not right. They are speaking about irrelevant fines while I was mentioning the fine to show their financially inefficient functioning. Either they are that much illiterate about the industry or predestined to support private companies at any cost.
Nanayam Vikatan does not even have the honesty to publish my letter and continued to publish the third part of the series.
We are open to rectify ourselves, if they point out genuine weakness, if any. But at the same time if anybody tries to spoil the image of LIC with partial statistics, can we keep silent?
No.
Now we have the duty to fight against the false propaganda of Nanayam Vikatan. What should we do? Record our objection in a firm manner through the following:
- Write letters to Nanayam Vikatan, 757, Anna Salai, Chennai-2.
- Send emails to nav@vikatan.com
- Send SMS to 562636
- Send Fax to 04428512929
- Call over phone to 044-28511616,28545500,28545588,28543300
- Do all the above and ask all your friends, relatives and policyholders to do the same.
We should make Nanayam Vikatan to understand its fault. We should show that all LICians have the respect and care over LIC.
It is our LIC! We are the people to protect LIC from any attack in any manner!!
-Arivukkadal
