Insurance claims to go up

BANGALORE: It happened in Mumbai earlier this year. Now, Bangalore is giving sleepless nights to the insurance industry. The floods on the roads and waterlogging in parking lots have pushed up the claims rate.
According to industry sources, the motor claims, which generally hover around 2,500, are likely to go up by 15-20 per cent during this month.
"It is not as scary as Mumbai where owners were forced to abandon their cars due to floods. In Bangalore, it is restricted to minor repairs but we have seen an increase in claims in the last few days," says Srinivas Raju, regional manager, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.
On an average, 5,500 cars and 15,000 twowheelers are added to the city's vehicle population every month. While the traffic situation has pushed up the claims numbers on an average to around 2,500 per month, the industry fears that the number could go up after the current rains.
"Most claims are in the region of Rs 15,000- Rs 20,000 per car due to waterlogging in parking lots of apartments. But we also have a couple of cases where the claims amounted to over Rs 2 lakh," says a source in an insurance company.
The public sector insurance companies, however, were not ready with the numbers and according to one source "it was still early days".
The current year has been a tough year for the motor insurance industry with natural calamities hitting the country at regular intervals. The year has already seen unusual floods in Gujarat and Mumbai.
The Mumbai floods was one of the worst, with average claims for companies being close to Rs 30,000 for small cars. In the case of bigger cars, the claim was as high as Rs 10 lakh.