At an Assocham event, Sood stressed the need for working closely with state governments on targeted insurance programmes.
The lack of motor-insurance coverage, Sood said, creates significant costs for state governments through hit-and-run compensation funds and leaves insurers paying out claims without matching premium income.
India records more than 400,000 road accidents annually. Sood said the current situation is unfair to insured motorists who pay premiums while uninsured vehicles still benefit from statutory compensation mechanisms.
Sood also flagged grievance redressal as a critical weak point in the industry’s effort to build trust.”Every grievance is a dent on that trust,” he said, adding that even a single unresolved complaint risks eroding confidence among policyholders. Insurers, distributors and intermediaries must “develop a robust and highly responsive mechanism” to ensure quick and fair resolution, he said. He called for greater use of monitoring tools and technology-led systems to strengthen grievance tracking and response times. But he emphasised that empathy remains central to the process. “If there is a grievance, we need to handle it with empathy,” Sood said.
Each resolved complaint, he added, should achieve two outcomes: reassurance to the customer that the insurer acted fairly, and internal introspection into what caused the issue – whether at the policy, distribution or claims stage.