Reena Bhatnagar: Transforming Reinsurance Industry Through Influential Leadership

Incorporated in 1972, General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC) is the largest reinsurance company in India in terms of gross premiums accepted in FY19. GIC Re provides reinsurance across many key business lines including fire (property), marine, motor, engineering, agriculture, aviation/space, health, liability, credit and financial and life insurance. It was a wholly-owned company of the Government of India until it issued its first tranche of IPO shares in the year 2017.

The Corporation has also diversified its business geographically to grow its underwriting business and profitability as well as to maintain a balanced portfolio of risks. It has developed its overseas business through its home office in Mumbai, branch offices in London, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, a representative office in Moscow and a subsidiary in the United Kingdom that is a member of Lloyd's of London and a subsidiary in South Africa. A new Syndicate fully capitalized by GIC Re became operational at Lloyds of London.

As the General Manager and Chief Underwriting Officer of GIC Re, Mrs. Reena Bhatnagar has played a vital role in taking the company to new heights. Her remit includes multiple portfolios like Aviation, Property Reinsurance (including Engineering & Large Risks), Brokers Relationship Management, Claims, and all Reinsurance Pools. She is a Director on the Boards of GIC Perestrakhovanie, Russia, and GIC Bhutan Re, along with being Deputy President of the Insurance Institute of India. 

Incidentally, she has been a speaker in the International Risk Management Conference, Kazakhstan, and in the Aviation Symposium, Mumbai 2018, and has been a panelist in various other Forums. 

She represents GIC Re as a member of the Technical Board of FAIR Aviation Pool.  (FAIR is the acronym for Federation of Afro-Asian Insurers and Reinsurers), and also represents GIC Re which is the Manager of FAIR Nat Cat Pool, in the FAIR meetings, as well as in the Steering Committee of FAIR.

An InspirationalJourney to Success

Reenastarted her career in the insurance industry in 1982. Since then she considers herself fortunate to have had opportunities to get varied exposure across different segments of Insurance and later in Reinsurance fields. Starting at the grass-root level in a small branch office in a public sector insurance company (New India Assurance Co Ltd), she later traversed the length and breadth of the country, handling Technical portfolios as well as marketing assignments, climbing the ladder, heading operational offices/regional office in the company. During this period, Reenawas awarded the 'Best Divisional Manager' award a couple of times. 

All these helped Reenagain substantial expertise in direct non-life insurance and she played a major role in designing of new products (especially in health insurance) and introducing pre-insurance health check-up for Mediclaim policyholders. 

Later,Reenaswitched to The Oriental Insurance Company, heading its Mumbai Regional Office-II and managed to turn it around into the largest Regional office of the Company. 

While heading various sections of the Reinsurance Department of GIC Re, she had the opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty of the reinsurance business. Handling niche classes of reinsurance businesses such as Energy and Aviation has been quite an enriching experience for her.  

As the CUO of GIC Re, Reena has played a key role in attempting to correct the loss-making Fire Insurance Industry, and now we are seeing a massive turnaround in the portfolio. During her current stint also, she has been a recipient of some awards - including the “Best Underwriter of the year” (InsuranceAlertss) and was one of the “Most Influential BFSI Leader 2020” - awarded by Economic Times-BFSI.

Through its more than 47 years of experience and commitment to providing reinsuranceproducts and services, GIC Re has become a trusted brand to its insurance and reinsurancecustomers in India and overseas. It wasranked as the 10th largest global reinsurer in 2018 in terms of gross premiums accepted.

Recently, GIC Re has been recognized by Forbes List 2019 as one of Global 2000 – Best RegardedCompanies and Worlds Best Employers. GIC Re has been rated "A-" (Excellent) with a stable outlook by AM Best for 10 consecutive years.

Facing and Overcoming Challenges

Commenting on challenges, Reena said, “It has been more a less an enriching journey so far. However, it would be wrong to say that there were no primal challenges at all. I can narrate a couple of such instances from the initial phase of my journey.”

Early in her career, she was posted in a comparatively backward (patriarchal) state. In the early 1990s, working women, especially in the managerial cadre, were rare in that state. So, it was quite a challenge for her to be taken seriously by the eco-system in and around the workplace.

“There were instances where I was not allowed inside certain factories (where I went for site visits) because women were not permitted entry.On a couple of occasions, while driving on the narrow two-lane highways in remote areas of the state to attend Lok Adalats (meetings organized by the courts for dispute redressal), truck drivers, not used to seeing lone women driving on highways in that belt, attempted to scare me by briefly swinging their truck towards my car. Though such an act was just for a second, it did unnerve me momentarily. 

Such instances, however, were quite rare and I soon learnt how to tackle them. 

The main issue was that women had to work twice as hard to make a mark in a patriarchal society,” Reena mentioned.

Vital Attributes for a Transformational Leadership

Reena firmly believes that transformational leader is the very antithesis of a "status quo" leader who likes to operate in a given contextual frame – he/she is creative, thinks out of the box, is not constrained by usual limitations and his/her imagination is amply leveraged. 

"The scope of thinking would go beyond process, function, organization and will be anchored to industry level and team level transformation, suffusing individual transformation. Such a leader would be capable of thinking in the abstract, leveraging the vision of the organization when well formulated. A truly large picture person with a very long-term vision." she further adds. 

Innovation through Customer-First Approach

Reena says that Reinsurance is about sharing and spreading the risk.The company's clients are insurance companies, it's a B2B industry. So, it has no direct contact with the insured client. However, there certainly is a scope for innovation on the supply side - which however increasingly relies on the business partners from the capital market.

Impact of Technology Disruption on Leadership

Reena states that the role of a leader has changed over years –even though essentially it remains the same at the core. The role has changed because the followership has evolved. At the same time, it remains the same since it is still the leadership that solves the jigsaw puzzle. Only, now the pieces of the jigsaw are more complex. As knowledge is democratized and functions and competencies become more super-specialized, putting together the jigsaw becomes more challenging.  

Insights into the Future

GIC Re is nearing half a century of its existence and is emerging as an institution of repute. A child of nationalization, it has come full circle and even after almost two decades of the opening up of the Reinsurance sector, its market share is about 75 percent.

Reinsurance is a global business and with the sector opening up or otherwise, GIC Rehas been facing global competition during its entire near half-century of existence. Yet, it has achieved the milestone of becoming the 11th largest global reinsurer.

Talking of the insurance industry in India, Reena feels it will certainly continue to see a high growth rate, quite higher than the country's GDP rate. As India enters the middle-income countries category, insurance will be bought more and more.The formalization of the economy, corporatization of trade, commerce, and industry, coupled with higher per capita income, changing risk management ethos - away from risk indifference and low insurance penetration - all point to a robust insurance sector growth over next three decades or till the time this catches up with the insurance penetration level broadly in line with developed economies.(Surprisingly, even in developed countries catastrophe protection is seen to be less than what one would expect from their given levels of prosperity and awareness)

On another note, globally there is an emphasis on sustainable development, meaning greater resilience against disasters which would come from avoidance, disaster risk management, financing, and risk transfer.  

Reena thinks, "Risks are not going away anytime soon, and as newer dimensions of risks emerge, as demonstrated by the current COVID-19 crisis, risk management and within it, the insurance sector, will increasingly take center-stage."

Essential Advice toEmerging Leaders

Reena advices budding leaders to look at the larger picture and further in space. Looking into the future in terms of evolutionary trends and disruptive paradigms, and at the same time, visualizing beyond the obvious will be an important competency going forward. “Business models may not continue to evolve – they are increasingly disrupted and massively influenced by imagination. Imagination increasingly leverages the potential for cross-discipline productivity. Commuting, restaurants, healthcare, hospitality, insurance…are some such examples. Possibly creativity could never be as leveraged in the history of mankind as it can today,” she asserts.