ICICI Prudential Life Q4 profit slips 23% to Rs 261 crore

The embedded value (EV) of the company increased by 15.1 per cent to Rs 21,623 crore at the end of March 2019, the company said in a statement.

Mumbai:
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance on April 24 reported a 23 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 261.02 crore for the January-March quarter of 2018-19.

The ICICI Bank subsidiary had reported a net profit of Rs 340.26 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal . However, total income in the said quarter on consolidated basis more than doubled to Rs 16,053.89 crore from Rs 7,136.87 crore in the year-ago period, ICICI Prudential Life said in a regulatory filing.

The company recommended a final dividend of Rs 1.55 per share of face value of Rs 10 each. The embedded value (EV) of the company increased by 15.1 per cent to Rs 21,623 crore at the end of March 2019, the company said in a statement.

The EV is similar to the book value of companies in other sectors. It is sum of the company’s net worth and the present value of all future profits to shareholders from the existing book of the company (including new business written in the year).

The total premium registered a growth of 14.3 per cent from Rs 27,069 crore to Rs 30,930 crore in 2018-19.

With regard to value of new business (VNB), it said, the margin increased to 17 per cent from 16.5 per cent in the previous fiscal. The absolute VNB for 2018-19 was Rs 1,328 crore.

VNB is used to measure profitability of the new business written in a period. It is present value of all future profits to shareholders measured at the time of writing of the new business contract.

Source: Asia Insurance Post

Date: 24th April 2019

Acko and Rapido tie-up to insure customers and captains

The comprehensive cover offered by Acko kicks in the moment a ride begins and secures the captain and customer against a multitude of risks. Besides death and disability where the sum insured is up to Rs 5 lakh, this cover also includes loan protection, medical expenses reimbursement and OPD treatment. Additionally, for captains, the insurance also covers child education, helmet and mobile damage

Mumbai:

Acko General Insurance has partnered with Rapido – India’s largest bike taxi booking app, to launch a trip insurance program which ensures everyday rides run risk-free for commuters.

This collaboration weeds out worries from the commuters’ journey by providing them with an insurance cover for the duration of the ride. Moreover, the insurance cover is extended to Rapido captains as well.

On booking a ride, Rapido customers and captains are instantly issued an insurance policy, against which a claim can be made directly via the Rapido app. The deep tech integration of both these companies reduces the time taken to process a claim and also eliminates the tedious process that accompanies the filing of a conventional claim.

Commenting on the initiative, Pavan G, Co-founder at Rapido said, “An insured journey, certainly aids in smoothening stress lines and assures relaxed travel. It is also of great value to our captains that include part-timers, students and retired individuals. With this tie-up, Rapido intends to provide a seamless and hassle-free experience to its customers and captains when they are on the go.”

Varun Dua, CEO of ACKO General Insurance, stated, “Shared mobility is expanding rapidly in the country as it is more affordable, accessible and convenient. Through an exhaustive insurance offering for Rapido customers and captains, Acko adds to the convenience and makes it a worry-free ride.”

With 3 lakh captains on board, a customer base of more than 20 lakh and running over 1,00,000+ daily rides across 25+ cities in India,

Source: Asia Insurance Post

Date: 23rd April 2019

Jet employees present ‘value’ hiring proposition for airlines but may get lower pay offers: Experts

NEW DELHI: Thousands of employees at now-shuttered Jet AirwaysNSE -11.13 % might be staring at an uncertain future but other airlines will see “value” in hiring such experienced people even though they might end up getting relatively lower pay packets, according to HR experts.

Demand continues to outstrip talent supply in the Indian aviation sector, which is one of the fastest growing in the world.

Cash-starved Jet Airways, which has been flying for nearly 26 years, has around 23,000 employees, including contractual staff. It announced a temporary suspension of operations on April 17.

Experts observed that employees would have been under stress at the airline for a while, though quite a few would have been hopeful of a turnaround of the carrier. Under the current circumstances, they might have to either shift base to Tier-II or Tier-III cities or accept job offers having lower compensation, they opined.

Staffing firm TeamLease Services Co-Founder and Executive Vice President Rituparna Chakraborty said that the aviation sector in India has immense potential and if one goes by the current equation, the supply of ground staff, crew and pilots are still low in comparison to the demand that exists.
In my mind, other airlines will definitely see value in hiring the experienced and highly well-trained staff that Jet has currently,” Chakraborty told PTI.
She also noted that there is a significant demand for core staff while non-specialised staff should look at an alternative industry for suitable functional roles.

The country’s oldest private carrier, Jet Airways has a substantial number of employees who have put in more than two decades at the airline.

Executive search company GlobalHunt’s Managing Director Sunil Goel said there has been a huge expansion in terms of new airports and connectivity in Tier-II and Tier-III cities through air transportation. So, there is a consistent demand for talent in the aviation sector, he added.

“Though morale of Jet Airways employees must be down looking at current scenario but as long as they will be open to exploring job opportunities in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, they will be having enough options to explore,” Goel said.

Tier-II and Tier-III cities are those located in non-metro areas.

Besides, the aviation sector on a high growth trajectory, there is also intense competition among domestic airlines.

“In such a scenario, with Jet airways shutting down, most of the experienced employees of Jet are expected to be absorbed with the competition. Non-aviation specific employees are also expected to find a lot of demand for their skills in other sectors,” SHRM India’s Head of Advisory Services Nishith Upadhyaya said.

SHRM is an HR grouping.

On Friday, SpiceJet said it has hired more than 500 employees of Jet Airways, including 100 pilots, and open to inducting more such people.
“As we expand and grow, we are giving first preference to those who have recently lost their jobs due to the unfortunate closure of Jet Airways,” SpiceJet Chairman and Managing Director Ajay Singh had said.
SpiceJet has already provided jobs to more than 100 pilots, over 200 cabin crew and 200 plus technical and airport staff recently, he had said.

Source-Economic Times

Date-2-04-2019

Online insurance aggregators make claims settlement easy

Extend free claims settlement services to customers of other insurance companies, too

Millions of people today buy insurance policies, including term life insurance, health insurance, motor insurance, and travel insurance; however, in many cases, policyholders are let down by the insurance provider at the time of claims settlement, negating the very reason for buying the policies.

Online insurance aggregators and brokers are offering insurance claims settlement services not only to their customers but also to others confronted with multiple issues in getting their claims processed and settled.

Insurance aggregator platform InsureMile says India’s 220-million policyholders can download the free app on their smartphones to update, renew, or cancel policies and, more importantly, file claims and check claims status. InsureMile went live last month, and has partnered with 24 leading insurance companies to offer more than 200 products across general and life insurance sectors.

Similarly, insurance broker IndianMoneyInsurance.com, a subsidiary of Bengaluru-based IndianMoney.com Group, which also went live last month, has opened up its platform to assist policyholders in India with free claims settlement services.

“Recent data reveal that currently in India ₹11,000 crore of premium is unclaimed due to the complex process of reaching out across multiple touch points. InsureMile is addressing this challenge by providing free policy services for all existing policies issued by insurance firms,” said Mallesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO, InsureMile.

According to the IRDAI, 1.1-crore policies worth ₹15,617 crore are lying unclaimed with 23 life insurers as on March 31, 2018. The amount has remained unclaimed beyond six months from the due date for settlement of the claim amount.

The question one must ask before buying an insurance policy is if the money will reach the nominee if anything goes wrong, said CS Sudheer, founder CEO IndianMoney.com Group.

“In most cases, the nominees are not aware of the policyholder’s insurance plans or whereabouts of the policy documents, resulting in unclaimed amounts piling up with insurers, and family members not receiving the money they badly need,” said Sudheer.

To make beneficiaries aware of policy documents and the claim process, IndianMoneyInsurance ensures that the proposal form is filled by the policyholder. Then a letter is sent to the nominee, telling him/her about the insurance plan, claim amount, and claim settlement process to make sure the money reaches the nominee.

Source-BusinessLine

Date-22-04-2019

No salary for months, Jet Airways employees wonder where to go now

Sensing imminent shutdown, many Jet Airways (India) Ltd employees had been looking for work elsewhere. On Wednesday evening, when the airline announced its plans to temporarily suspend domestic operations after failing to secure emergency funding from lenders, not many were surprised. Yet, not many expected the announcement quite so soon.

“A lot of cabin crew staff began looking out for jobs when salary delays (for senior management) became a norm rather than an exception last year,” said a Mumbai-based flight attendant, who has been with the airline for around five years, requesting anonymity.

At a recent event in a five star hotel in a Mumbai suburb, Qatar Airways had held job interviews for cabin crew. The event was filled with Jet Airways employees seeking to join the Gulf-based airlines.

“Since there were so many people, there was hardly any place to sit. The organizers probably didn’t expect so many applicants. So, we all sat on the ground waiting for our turn to come as we really wanted the job,” the flight attendant added.

Jet Airways has held back salaries since January to a section of its staff, including pilots, engineers and general managers. Besides, the carrier has deferred the salaries for March to all employees, as it continues to battle financial woes.

“It is very unfortunate that we have to see this day,” said Karan Chopra, president of Jet Airways’ pilots union, National Aviators Guild (NAG), after Jet announced the temporary closure of domestic operations.

“We are hoping that this is a temporary suspension of operations and, once the bids are out, which I am hopeful of, the operations will resume,” Chopra said, adding that he will continue at the airline for the time being. NAG has decided to take legal recourse against the management for failing to give pilots’ salaries.

“We haven’t got salaries for three months, and this has led to a major disruption in our lives. I have EMIs (equated monthly instalments) apart from funding my parents’ medical expenses and my children’s education,” said another pilot with Jet Airways, who didn’t want to be named.

“With the airline deciding to shut shop, things look bleaker than ever now. I just hope that we don’t see a repeat with what happened to the employees of Kingfisher Airlines,” he added.

Kingfisher Airlines Ltd shut shop in 2012 after the authorities suspended its flying licence. Many employees are yet to be paid their salary dues.

“We are blank at the moment. We don’t know if there will be any buyers for Jet as banks have not given any assurance. Nobody knows where (founder) Naresh (Goyal) is—whether he is even in India or not,” an engineer with the airline said.

Jet Airways has over 16,000 employees, including about 1,300 pilots in workforce.

Source: LiveMint

Date: 18^th April 2019

“With the airline deciding to shut shop, things look bleaker than ever now. I just hope that we don’t see a repeat with what happened to the employees of Kingfisher Airlines,” he added.

Kingfisher Airlines Ltd shut shop in 2012 after the authorities suspended its flying licence. Many employees are yet to be paid their salary dues.

Jet Airways has over 16,000 employees, including about 1,300 pilots in workforce.

Source: LiveMint

Date: 18^th April 2019

IT hiring picks up; Chennai, Bengaluru lead jobs growth: Report

MUMBAI: Hiring activities registered 12% growth this March mainly led by the IT industry that clocked a 38% growth, says a report.

The Naukri JobSpeak Index for March 2019, stood at 2,378, which is 12% higher in hiring activities from March 2018, at 2,129.

The IT-industry has shown a continuous growth in the recruitment landscape over the past six months, recording a rise of 38% growth.

Recruitment for functional areas like human resources and marketing observed a growth of 13% and 12% respectively.

The JobSpeak index continues with its positive growth in hiring with a 12 percent rise when compared to the same period last year. Our latest hiring outlook survey showed 89 percent recruiters from the IT industry stating that new jobs and replacement hiring will play a strong role in hiring. Hopefully the momentum will be sustained in the coming months,” InfoEdge India CMO Sumeet Singh said.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index which calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on Naukri.com website month on month.

The industries in March 2019 which saw growth in recruitment activity were construction and engineering (13%), BPO and ITES (9%), insurance (6%), FMCG (5%), education (7%) and IT hardware (3%).

Since the beginning of the year, IT software has been on a hiring spree on the other hand, industries like auto ancillary and banking and financial services saw a dip of 8% and 15% in hiring, respectively, it said.

Further the report revealed that demand for mid-level executives, in the experience band of 4-7 years, grew by 14% whereas recruitment for entry-level jobs, with an experience band of 0-3 years, witnessed a rise of 12%.

Recruitment activity for mid-management roles with 8-12 years of experience grew by 9 %, while senior management roles with 13-16 years of experience recorded a 5% rise in hiring.

Moreover, it said, hiring for leadership roles with experience band of over 16 years remained flat.

When it come to cities, the report said, Bengaluru and Chennai saw positive growth in hiring and clocked in an 18% and 13%, respectively.

In Bengaluru the IT-software industry recorded a growth of 49% in their recruitment activities, however, the auto and ancillary and BFSI industry saw a dip of 6% and 43%, respectively.

While hiring for leadership roles with experience band of over 16 years in the city saw a growth of 29% in March, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index.

Meanwhile, in Chennai the IT and software dominated the hiring scenario by 45% growth while BFSI saw a dip of 12%, it said.

Functional area of ITES continued to remain positive with a growth of 24% in Chennai and hiring for management roles with experience band of 4-7 years saw a growth of 25% in March, it added.

Source-LiveMint

Date-10-04-2019

Leaders Confident about Dealing with Current Disruptions: Study

Nine in 10 executives in India anticipate significant industry disruption in the next three years against four in 10 last year, according to Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends Study.

But more than two-third of executives rated their company’s ability to mitigate human capital risks, such as the ability to close employee skill gaps and overcome change fatigue, as very effective, the study found. “This shows that there is a fair level of confidence among leaders about dealing with current disruptions,” said Shanthi Naresh, India business leadercareer, Mercer.

The study had over 5,500 responses from C-suite executives, HR personnel and employees in India, and identified the current worries of C-suite executives in India, how HR teams were addressing those concerns, and what employees thought about their work.

The study found that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation continued to transform the competitive landscape, with 76% of companies planning to automate more work in the next 12 months. At the same time, C-suite executives named job redesign as one of the top five areas of talent investment with the highest potential for return on investment while 70% of the employees preferred more clearly defined responsibilities.

According to the study, the challenge for HR is to build an integrated people strategy and leverage the right talent analytics to inform decisions on the future size and shape of the organisation.

“Redesigning jobs amidst a changing landscape requires identifying what jobs will create value in the future and finding ways and means to motivate employees to pursue skills and behaviours required for these jobs,” Naresh told ET.

The study found that two in three employees were concerned that AI and automation will replace their jobs, and more than half wanted curated learning opportunities to help them evolve their skills and prepare for future jobs.

Largely, employees seek stability and job security was one of the top three reasons they joined their company, and one of the main reasons they stayed.

According to the study, thriving employees are almost two times more likely to work for an organisation that enables quick decision-making and that provides tools and resources for them to do their job efficiently.

Source:- The Economic Times

Date:- 9^th April,2019- Tuesday

“4 powerful AI for HR examples that show promise, minefields”

I and machine learning have reached Taylor Swift-level hype, with AI for HR arguably in the brightest spotlight. But there’s hype, and there’s reality — and, in today’s climate, it can be difficult to determine which is which.

To that end, here are four ways AI for HR is being used — and why not everyone is a fan.

1. Mentoring facilitation

As companies struggle to retain talent, learning and development (L&D) initiatives will only become more important. Mentoring is an important category of L&D, and tech vendors have taken note. To this point, an article in Human Resource Executive highlighted the AI-driven app Ellen, from San Francisco-based Next Play. Ellen fosters mentoring both by facilitating the creation of partnerships and by offering resources and reminders post-mentor/mentee pairing.

Some worry a tool such as Ellen replaces human connection with technology and will result in less effective mentoring, while Next Play maintains the AI tool can help democratize mentoring and give more people a chance to grow.

2. Diversity and inclusion promotion

Job descriptions contain a plethora of subtle messages about company culture, including its inclusiveness — or lack thereof. A job ad containing the phrase “seeking rock stars” may suggest to female job seekers that the company has a “bro culture.” AI tools can help illuminate such missteps.

One example is Textio, which analyzes writing for gender bias and other unintentional messages. It suggests alternative wording, serving as an AI-powered writing coach on diversity and inclusion. The tool has a number of users, including online travel booking company Expedia Inc. and online real estate company Zillow Group, which has seen an11% increase in female applicants through its use of the tool.

3. Candidate screening

Finding the right talent is a major hurdle for virtually all organizations. To help, AI companies are creating tools to scan resumes, online job profiles and job queries much more quickly than humans can. These AI recruiting tools areautomating the candidate search process by surfacing the best candidates to the top of the pile.

Since promoting diversity and inclusion is seen as one primary benefit of using AI in HR, it’s ironic that bias is one of the main dangers of AI screening tools, a problem that forced Amazon to abandon a sexist recruiting engine. Indeed, AI algorithms can reflect biases of the people creating them, and machine learning can adapt to reinforce such biases.

4. Video interview analysis

As companies target less time spent on the interviewing process, video interviewing software has become increasingly popular. HireVue Inc. takes that concept further by adding AI. Its video interviewing system uses voice and facial recognition technology, along with a ranking algorithm, to size up candidates.

The company says its algorithms are superior to people in finding the best candidates. But the “black box” aspect of its algorithm highlights the danger of HR managers trusting technology in such a critical area.

Source: Tech Target

Date: 04th April, 2019

Don’t Try to be Perfect

Many a time, you become angry or miserable because of the feverishness for perfection. If you are too much of a perfectionist, you are bound to be an angry person. In a state of ignorance, imperfection is natural and perfection is an effort. In a state of wisdom or enlightenment, imperfection is an effort; perfection is compulsion and is unavoidable.

When you are in ‘vairagya’ (dispassion), you can take care of even insignificant things with perfection. Perfection is the very nature of the Enlightened One. When we are joyful, we don’t look for perfection. If you are looking for perfection, then you are not at the source of joy. Joy is the realisation that there is no vacation from wisdom. The world appears imperfect on the surface but, underneath, all is perfect.

Perfection hides; imperfection shows off. The wise will not stay on the surface but will probe into the depth. Things are not blurred; your vision is blurred. Infinite actions prevail in the wholeness of consciousness and, yet, the consciousness remains perfect, untouched. Realise this now and be natural.

In this world, everything cannot be perfect all the time. Even the best, the greatest of actions, performed with the noblest of intentions, will have some imperfections. But the tendency of our mind is to grab the imperfection and hold on to it. And, in the process, we end up making our moods, our minds imperfect and our souls reel with this nonsense. It is imperative to get out of these cycles, and to become strong and courageous from within.

Source: Economic Times

Date: 1st April 2019

TALENT DISCOVERI

An Idea born out of Entrepreneurial Enthusiasm and Vision of a set of Young Business Turks

Month: April 2019