Having shot past at least two of its peers in the public sector, Kolkata-based National Insurance Company Ltd plans on recruiting 20,000 agents in the current year, to further strengthen its grip on the general insurance market.

Hastening its growth in the past two years, the company has consolidated its market share to 27 per cent from 21 per cent.

"In the first quarter of the current year we have been growing at an annualised rate of 28 per cent, while the industry has averaged a growth on only 1-2 per cent," H S Wadhwa, chairman, NIC highlighted, speaking to media persons in Chennai on Wednesday.

Adding that NIC has been outperforming the industry in the past two years, he pointed out that his company scored a growth of 23 per cent in 2001-02, when the industry went up by 11 per cent. In 2002-03 NIC grew by 20 per cent, while industry slowed down to a two per cent growth.

The chairman said that the company is aggressively growing its personal insurance business, which in 2003-04 accounted for 25-30 per cent of the company's premium collection.

"In the current year, we will see this growing to 40 per cent," he informed. Industrial insurance constitutes 30 per cent of its premium portfolio, while rural policies bring in another 15 per cent.

The company which posted a Rs 94.34 crore (Rs 934 million) loss in 2001-02, revamped its marketing strategy to post a smart recovery with net profit of Rs 135 crore (Rs 1.35 billion) in the subsequent year.

Pending the closure of accounts, Wadhwa, of course, refused to reveal the figures for 2003-04. Clearly, NIC has been leaning heavily on big corporate clients.

In 2003-04, of its total premium collection of Rs 3,400 crore (Rs 34 billion) about Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) came in from Reliance. Nokia and ONGC are its other major corporate clients. Its biggest deal in the recent times was with Maruti.

"We are doing Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) per day from this deal," Wadhwa revealed. Accepting that there has been a claims on its cover on Reliance Infocomm, he said NIC has been able to cope because the account had been adequately reinsured in anticipation of this eventuality.

Among its existing spread of 50,000 agents, NIC has been pruning the non-operational links. Wadhwa said that the company will be launching its singularly manned offices from August 1. Of the 600 offices planned, approval for 500 have already been communicated.

Wadhwa is confident of the success of this project, despite the failure face by United India Insurance with an initiative on similar lines sometime ago.

NIC is also upbeat about its marketing tie-ups with about 15 banks to date. "Our policies are today being sold out of about 15,000 branches across the country," he explained.

The company is also looking client acquisitions among various state government. It is already doing health insurance for the Jammu and Kashmir government. It has been insuring properties of the Haryana Government. There is more in the pipeline, he informed.

With an eye on smoother claim settlements, the company has revised its guidelines for the procedures and is also enhancing the financial empowerment of the field officers.