INDIAN COMPANIES are increasingly providing offshore insurance services, such as actuarial work, issue of policies and claim settlement. BPOs and KPOs are moving up the value chain to provide these services and renewals, among other things. As a result, revenues from offshore insurance BPO services are slated to rise from $690 million in 2006 to about $2 billion by 2010.

“The future of the offshore insurance is very good. As costs go up, Indian companies will have to upgrade their work from selling credit cards to various tasks connected with insurance and other industries. Actuarial work is one such high-end work that will come to India. Many companies have already started doing such work in India,” said RIA Insurance Brokers CEO S K Sethi.

Accounting and human resource solutions are among the first processes to be offered offshore by insurance carriers. How-ever, in the last two to three years, a large number of activities in claims processing functions have also found their way offshore.

By 2010, a large number of Indian vendors will evolve into becoming end-to-end service providers. Players such as Genpact, WNS and EXL Services are set to emerge as formidable global players in the insurance offshore business space. “Indian outsourced service providers dispense services like actuarial services, tele-support services and designing and printing of marketing material to insurers around the world,” said Optima Insurance Brokers CEO Rahul Aggarwal. However, increase in labour costs in India may threaten the industry.