Chandigarh, March 21, 2017: With a view to achieve target of 50% farmers to be covered under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) by 2019 more and more initiatives are being taken by insurers & the Government. 2016 -17 has been the year of lot of activities and the credit goes to Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, Haryana Government and various Insurers. According to Alok Agarwal, Executive Director, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd. “ICICI Lombard is having a great focus on Fasal Bima Yojana and we have decided to use combination of Physical reach (Feet on Street) & Digital Technology to reach the farmers located in 7 districts of Haryana to ensure maximum coverage of both loanee and non-loanee farmers in the Districts allotted to ICICI Lombard.
He further informed “In Haryana, ICICI Lombard has insured 1.8 lakh farmers for Kharif 2016 (mostly Paddy crop) & 1.3 lakh farmers for Rabi 2016 (mostly wheat crop) in seven districts of Palwal, Panipat, Rohtak, Fatehbad, Mewat, Jhajjar and Yamuna Nagar.
During the interaction we had with him in Chandigarh on March 2, 2017, Mr. Agarwal apprised us that ICICI Lombard is doing extremely well in rural business, where Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima is the major contributor. We are also informed that in addition to Haryana it is handling Fasal Bima Yojana in clusters of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh.
During the year 2016 – 17, with the initiative of Central Government duly supported by State Governments and participation of various Insurance Companies, our country has seen very robust growth of Fasal Bima. It is heartening to see that such growth has been achieved in one year. On all India basis, premium collection during the year has gone up from Rs. 5700 Crores (previous year 2015-16) to Rs 21000 Crores (estimated 2016-17). This is an increase of 268% in single year. According to Mr. Agarwal “Our estimates show that this figure will go up to Rs 23000 Crores during 2018-19 and Fasal Bima will become a major part of Indian General Insurance Industry.”
ICICI Lombard Crop Insurance key statistics are:
o GWP in 2015-16: Rs. 592 Crores
o GWP in 2016-17: Rs 2100 Crores An increase of 255%
o Pan-India Farmers Insured in 2015-16: 49 lacs
o Pan-India Farmers Insured in 2016-17: 39 lacs (estd)
Mr. Alok Agarwal, Executive Director, ICICI Lombard General Insurance informed that number of farmers insured under Fasal Bima Yojana (Crop Insurance) has touched more than 39 Lakhs (Kharif/ Rabi combined and during 2017-2019 period this number will go up significantly)
Answering the question how ICICI Lombard plans to reach the farmers in villages in Haryana we are informed that “The Company is utilising various intermediaries to reach Crores of farmers by utilising the services of various banks (ICICI, other Banks, Cooperative Banks/ Rural Banks/ Gramin Banks), its own branches/ offices, Insurance Broker Firms, Agents, CSC (Common Service Centres) as well as POS. Objective is to reach to each and every farmer, who is residing in 7 districts allocated by Haryana Government to ICICI Lombard. We are putting special efforts to use local youngsters by creating jobs for them in their own villages. In addition to selling Fasal Bima we will use them for insuring vehicles, tractors, cattle, health insurance & shop insurance. This initiative of Prime Minister Modi will result in generation of employment as well as increase in insurance penetration in rural India. We will provide these representatives with Tablets so that they can complete the proposal, while sitting in front of the farmer.”
Usage of technology:
Achieving Customers satisfaction by providing speedy service and that too with control on costs makes it necessary that use of Technology is made in a big way.
Even PMFBY guidelines lay major stress on use of technology for various processes involved in crop insurance scheme viz. yield estimation, conducting CCEs or claim settlement. Thus providing a technological solution to these issues becomes an integral part of the process.
o ICICI Lombard has partnered with North East Centre for Technology Application and Research (NECTAR), which uses drones and remote sensing technology for village wise crop wise yield estimation. The project was undertaken in Rabi 15-16 seasons and is being implemented in Kharif’16 as well.
o Use of drones: For capturing different types of images which are used for crop classification and monitoring crop health using various vegetation indices.
o Impact: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)/Drones provide an excellent way to capture different parameters which impact the ultimate yield of the crops. Also it can capture a vast area for observing the crop which is very difficult in case of manual ground sampling, thus providing a quick solution in the yield estimation process.
Drones Facility and its working:
- In every harvesting season (kharif and Rabi), India gears up to estimate production and productivity of various crops across all states. A number of policy related decisions such as procurement by Government Machinery, allocation to food security missions, export-import policy, trading and stocking policy etc depend upon crop yield estimates.
- With the launch of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), it is envisioned to estimate the yield of Major crops at Gram Panchyat level. This will help not only in settlement of claims at Gram Panchayat level (a step closer to individual yields) but also help in accurately estimating the national production as well as productivity.
- Till now, calculation of Crop yield estimates has been a responsibility of Revenue department of most of the states and estimates were carried at block/sub block level keeping the single series intact. With reducing the unit of insurance from block/sub block to Gram Panchayat, the states are supposed to gear up and expand the system of Crop Cutting experiments.
- Being a very lengthy exercise which needs to be carried out in a short span of 15-20 days, there is huge pressure on government machinery as well as resources to complete the activity efficiently and timely. Hence, there is an immediate and imminent need of use of technology in this field. A number of studies in India and Abroad have proved that at least area under each crop can easily be measured using remote sensing techniques. Very recently, a number of Indian agencies have also tried their hands in estimating the area and uniformity in crop using drones and satellite imagery.
- ICICI Lombard, one of the oldest and largest private general insurance company has recently tied up with North East Centre for Technology Application and Reach (NECTAR) for use of a three tier model for calculation of yield estimates at Gram Panchayat Level using a combination of manual as well as technological advancements.
- ICICI Lombard took efforts to launch a pilot project in four district of Rajasthan namely Jodhpur, Badmer, Pali and Hanumangarh and one district of Madhya Pradesh namely Ujjain, Mandsaur and Shajapur.
- ICICI Lombard collected the ground truth results for last many years using resources from NECTAR as well as its own. Remote sensing images were procured for the continuous patch of the identified districts.
- For the selected districts, drone was flown over specific geo coordinates of the patch. Based on the spectral images (color allocation) obtained from these geo coordinates, the spectral inference thus obtained, was generalized for whole continuous patch.
- Since the actual yield data, weather data and CCE data for same geo coordinates of the patch have been collected, an equation is being designed using these factors and spectral properties obtained through satellite images.
- Presently this model is in testing phase for the yield data of 2015. Post completion of this testing phase, same model will be applied in this year to estimate this year’s yield.
- A lot will depend upon the results of this exercise and a positive one will change the way Insurance companies estimates the yield for assessment of the claims under yield based crop insurance programs.
- The satellite images at a later stage can be geo referenced and with digitization of land records, the results can simultaneously captured at a central server. With JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile), the claims can be settled with lightening speed without waiting for manual results to come.
Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)
