Women's Day: How Bajaj Allianz Insurance boosted female workforce in a male-dominated industry

India’s insurance industry is dominated by male employees and often considered to be a difficult choice for women over the last many years, with just 1 women among 100 men employees.

Changing the perception that insurance is not a popular financial services employer, Bajaj Allianz GIC on the occassion of Women’s Day today said it has created an All Women Branch initiative that carved entrepreneurs amongst women, groomed them, by facilitating training to create the desired skill set to work in the insurance industry.

Being different from the traditional distribution models, Bajaj Allianz’s AWB model was conceptualised in 2014 and implemented in the following year. The insurance arm of Bajaj today has a network of 31 branches in both metros and tier 2 cities like Kolhapur, Amritsar, Shillong, Coimbatore etc. with 1,300 women agents associated with it and 200 women employees with BAGIC running the show.

The company plans to expand the AWB initiative to 50 offices in 2018-19 pan-India. As the name suggests, AWB branches are run by women employees who hire, recruit and train women to sell general insurance products. The uniqueness of this initiative lies in the ecosystem that the company has created for them to help them grow professionally while they continue to maintain their work life balance.

The initiative has helped several women, with some even contributing over Rs 50 lakh of business this year. Given the earning depends on the business solicited by these women, the initiative sees women earning around Rs 15 lakh to Rs 5 lakh a year depending on the financial goals set by them. Over the last two years, average premium for the initiative has also risen substantially.

“While the intention of the AWB initiative is not entirely to generate volumes for the company, but to tap the large untapped pool of talented women who want to work and contribute but were unable to do due to time and family considerations,” the company said in a media statement.

From a business perspective, we have found that women agents bring in long term viable and sustainable business primarily in personal lines such as health and home insurance.