Critical Illness Cover for each Family Member in 1 Policy, 1 Premium

Expenses associated with critical illness treatment are only increasing in the country. Medical or health insurance is essential to cope with these expenses, however, they may not be enough to manage the financial burden that comes along with a critical illness, especially if the illness strikes the breadwinner of the family. Typically most of the Indian population dips into its savings or other investments to meet their expenses arising due to illness. This often leads to their life goals getting derailed. Furthermore, mediclaim/hospitalisation plans have limits and sub-limits restricting individual to claim the expenses incurred. Many feel that a hospital reimbursement / mediclaim plan is enough to cover all healthcare expenses including critical illness, forgetting that critical illness comes with several ancillary expenses, including loss of income, when the illness strikes the breadwinner.

Keeping these key insights in mind, Bajaj Allianz Life, one of India’s leading life insurance company, launched a critical illness cover, Bajaj Allianz Life Health Care Goal, today. In this plan, a family of up to 6 members can be covered under one policy in one premium. The plan has other unique features designed to help Indians manage most of the expenses arising due to critical illnesses.

Speaking at the launch, Tarun Chugh, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life, said, “We are here to offer our customers an extensive product portfolio to help them achieve their life goals. Being impacted by a critical illness and not having enough backing to manage the financial burden, could derail our customers’ life goals journey. Hence, we are happy to introduce a robust critical illness product where an entire family can be covered under a single policy, to ensure that our customers are able to focus on getting better rather than worrying about the expenses associated with the illness. For instance, our family cover feature. It ensures life goals of others in the family don’t get impacted, in case of a critical illness within the family. The product is simple and holistic, designed keeping our customers’ needs and insights in mind.”

Unique features of Bajaj Allianz Life Health Care Goal

1.Family and individual cover: A policyholder can cover his entire family (up to six members) under one policy with one premium. Each individual in the family will be covered by a separate sum assured (family: self + spouse + children). Furthermore, a claim made for one member does not reduce the sum assured of others.

2. Return of Premium: Offering more value to customers, Bajaj Allianz Life Health Care Goal comes with the Return of Premium feature. Here, at the end of policy term the company returns all the premium paid towards the policy, in case no claim has been made in the policy (comes with two variants of the policy*).

a. Waiver of Premium: This is applicable in all the four variants* of the product. Under the family variant, in case the policy holder were to have permanent total disability due to accident, or suffer a critical illness or is deceased, then the company will waive away all the future premium payments.

3. Cover for 36 critical illnesses: Critical illnesses covered include heart, lung, liver, cancer, brain surgery, major head trauma, multiple sclerosis and more. It is the only critical illness policy by a life insurer to cover Encephalitis and Bacterial Meningitis, critical illnesses affecting children.

4. Payment in lump sum: To help policyholders manage expenses associated with critical illness the sum assured is paid in lump sum on the detection of the illness. Furthermore, the policyholder can claim the benefit of this plan in addition to the hospital reimbursement they may have. This ensures they have ample funds to manage the expenses arising due to the critical illness.

*Four variants of Bajaj Allianz Life Health Care Goal, offering individual or family cover and the plus variants provides the  option to receive the premiums paid on maturity. 
• For Individuals: Critical Long Term Health Care and Critical Long Term Health Care Plus
• For family (policyholder, spouse, children): Long Term Family Health Care, Long Term Family Health Care Plus
The critical illness policy is a regular/limited premium payment plan with monthly, quarterly, half yearly and yearly premium payment options. It can be purchased online or through the company’s extensive sales channels.

Bajaj Allianz Life Health Care Goal, offering cover for 36 critical illnesses to each family member in a single policy with one premium, is one of the essential to be a part of a policyholders’ portfolio. It will ensure life goals aren’t impacted and are on track, and the financial burden of a critical illness is managed effectively.

Mahindra Group to go Carbon Neutral by 2040; Focus on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Power

India’s leading manufacturer of utility vehicles and part of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group, today announced its commitment to become a carbon neutral company by 2040. Mahindra will focus on energy efficiency and the use of renewable power to achieve this target. Residual emissions will be addressed through carbon sinks.

Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group and co-chair of the Global Climate Action Summit currently under way in San Francisco committed that his entire group of businesses would become carbon neutral.

This is significant because earlier Mahindra had pledged that only its flagship company - Mahindra & Mahindra - would become carbon neutral by 2040. However, after listening to leaders speak at the Summit, he upped the ante on his commitment by extending that pledge to the entire group.

“We are doing our part in the global fight against climate change with this ambitious new target. Mahindra will leverage the latest technological advances and its recently announced Carbon Price to work towards being carbon neutral by 2040.”

M&M was the first company in the world to commit to doubling energy productivity by signing on to The Climate Group’s program EP100. Using energy efficient lighting, efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), motors and heat recovery projects, Mahindra & Mahindra has doubled the energy productivity of the automotive business almost 12 years ahead of schedule. The farm equipment business is also ahead of schedule in achieving its goal and is more than half-way there.

The company was also the first Indian company to announce its internal Carbon Price of $10 per ton of carbon emitted to fund investments required to pursue the path of carbon neutrality. The price was carefully arrived at on the basis of international benchmarks and an assessment of what was required to achieve the goals set by the business on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The company has more than 10 years of experience in creating carbon sinks. It looks forward to using this experience to deal with residual emissions in a manner that is world class and follows the best established protocols.

M&M will be working on its carbon neutrality commitment with the international non-profit organization Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which works with leading companies to raise the bar for corporate sustainability leadership. It will continue to work with EDF and other leading partners as it implements actions towards achieving carbon neutrality.

M&M is also a signatory of the Science based targets initiative which provides companies with a clear pathway for reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. All these commitments are helping the company on its path to go carbon neutral. 

Sunil Shah Appointed CEO for Societe Generale Global Solution Centre and its European Business Services

Societe Generale announces  the appointment with immediate effect of Sunil Shah as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Societe Generale’s solution centres: Societe Generale Global Solution Centre (India) and Societe Generale European Business Services (Romania).

Based in Bangalore and reporting to Christophe Leblanc, Group Head of Corporate Resources and Innovation, Sunil will oversee the centres delivering services on Information Technology, Banking operations, Finance and Research, for Societe Generale across the globe.

Located across India (Bangalore and Chennai), and Romania (Bucharest), the centres are comprising over 9,000 employees. With the talent adept at new emerging technologies, Sunil will further drive the digital transformation initiatives, innovation and creation of new services and solutions for Societe Generale.

Commenting on Sunil’s appointment, Christophe Leblanc said, “We are delighted to appoint Sunil as CEO of Societe Generale Global Solution Centre and the European Business Services. Sunil has over two decades of significant experience in the financial services sector spanning investment banking, asset management, financial services and information technology and has also been with the organization for over 7 years. He will be the right person to drive the company towards our vision of heightened client centricity and digital transformation goals.”

Biography

Sunil joined SG GSC in 2011 as Head of ITEC. Since 2015 he is leading all delivery verticals as Deputy CEO of SG GSC. Sunil has over 25 years of experience in IT and BFSI industry groups. He joined Societe Generale Global Solutions Centre in 2011 as Deputy CEO and was responsible for Operations, IT and KPO services. Prior to that, Sunil has worked with Fidelity for over 7 years and led the asset management IT team. He also worked with Infosys for over a decade managing large programs for financial services firms and consulting assignments across India and global locations.

Sunil holds a Computer Science Engineering Degree from the University of Mysore, and an MBA from INSEAD, Singapore and France.

Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd NCD Issue to Open from September 14, 2018 with Attractive Interest Rate upto 9.75% Per Annum

Aadhar Housing Finance Limited (the “Company”), a deposit taking housing finance company registered with the NHB and focused on providing affordable housing financing products for the EWS and LIG segment in India, in tier 2 to tier 4 cities and towns, proposes to open public issue of Secured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (“NCDs”) of face value of Rs. 1,000 on September 14, 2018, 1,40,00,000 for an amount of Rs. 50,000 lakhs (“Base Issue Size”) with an option to retain oversubscription up to Rs. 90,000 lakhs aggregating up to Rs. 1,40,000 lakhs (“Tranche 1 Issue Limit”) (“Tranche 1 Issue”).

The Issue is scheduled to close on September 28, 2018 with an option of early closure or extension as decided by the Board of Directors of the Company (“Board”) or the Working Committee.

Ratings by CARE Ratings & Brickwork Ratings India: Outlook: Stable

The NCDs proposed to be issued under this Issue have been rated ‘CARE AA+ (SO) ((Pronounced as CARE Double A Plus Structured Obligation); Outlook: Stable)’ for an amount of `3,00,000 lakhs, by CARE Ratings Limited (“CARE”) and ‘BWR AA+ (SO) (Pronounced as BWR Doub le A Plus (Structured Obligation)), Outlook: Stable (for an amount of `3,00,000 lakhs, by Brickwork Ratings India Private Limited (“Brickwork”) The rating of CARE AA+ (SO); Outlook: Stable by CARE and BWR AA+ (SO), Outlook: Stable by Brickwork indicate that instruments with this rating are considered to have high degree of safety regarding timely servicing of financial obligations. Such instruments carry very low credit risk.

Allotment is on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Issue Structure:

Tenure 3 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series I: Frequency of Interest Payment “NA”. Coupon Rate: “NA”. Effective Yield: 9.60%.

Series II: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.60%. Effective Yield: 9.59%.

Tenure 5 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series III: Frequency of Interest Payment Monthly. Coupon Rate: 9.25%. Effective Yield: 9.65%.

Series IV: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.65%. Effective Yield: 9.64%.

Tenure 10 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series V: Frequency of Interest Payment Monthly. Coupon Rate: 9.35%. Effective Yield: 9.75%.

Series VI: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.75%. Effective Yield: 9.74%.

[Category IV] Investors (Retail Individual Investors) are defined as Resident Indian Individuals and Hindu Undivided Families through the Karta applying for an amount aggregating up to and including Rs. 10,00,000 across all options of NCDs in the Tranche I Issue.

At least 75% of the net proceeds of the Public Issue of NCDs will be used for the For the purpose of onward lending, financing, and for repayment of interest and principal of existing borrowings of the Company. A maximum of up to 25% will be used for general corporate purposes.

The NCDs offered through the Shelf Prospectus and the Tranche I Prospectus are proposed to be listed on BSE Limited (“BSE”). BSE Is the Designated Stock Exchange.

The Lead Managers to the Issue are YES Securities (India) Limited, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited, YES Bank Limited, Axis Bank Limited, A. K. Capital Services Limited, Green Bridge Capital Advisory Private Limited and Trust Investment Advisors Private Limited.

Luminous Unveils “Regalia”, India's First Wall Mounted Smart Power Backup System

Luminous Power Technologies, India’s leading power back-up specialist, announced the launch of REGALIA in the southern states of the country today. It’s a revolutionary lithium ion based power back-up system that can be wall mounted and comes loaded with multiple user-friendly features. Regalia is a compact power back-up system that is designed in an aesthetically pleasing and modern style with an expected lifespan of up to 10 years. It uses the integrated lithium ion battery technology which makes it maintenance free and removes the need of periodic water top up. Regalia is also future ready, offering consumers the option to charge Regalia with regular mains supply or through solar panels harnessing abundant solar energy.

Speaking at the launch, Vipul Sabharwal, Managing Director, Luminous Power Technologies, said, “At Luminous we consistently strive towards excellence in quality and performance. We take great pride to come up with path-breaking products Indian consumers have never seen before. Regalia is our most sophisticated and smartest power back-up system. With Regalia, we are bringing a whole new experience to our consumers that will change the way power back-up technology is perceived. Regalia is smart, safe, stylish, solar ready, has an everlasting battery and is maintenance free. It truly is a revolutionary power back-up system. We feel that the tech-oriented markets in Southern India are ready to adopt a high-tech product like Regalia.”

Regalia is designed to suit modern sensibilities to seamlessly blend with the home décor for both contemporary and traditionally styled homes. It enables users to stay connected using Wi-Fi. It also has a touch screen to view backup time, charging time or for configuration. It is safe, eliminating the risk of accidental contact by doing away with wires, terminals and includes an in-built safety mechanism to protect appliances from voltage surges and short circuits.

Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17.3 Percent in 2019

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 to total $206.2 billion, up from $175.8 billion in 2018, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2018, Gartner forecasts that the market will grow 21 percent, up from $145.3 billion in 2017.

The fastest-growing segment of the market is cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service or IaaS), which is forecast to grow 27.6 percent in 2019 to reach $39.5 billion, up from $31 billion in 2018 (see Table 1).

By 2022, Gartner expects that 90 percent of organizations purchasing public cloud IaaS will do so from an integrated IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) provider, and will use both the IaaS and PaaS capabilities from that provider.

"Demand for integrated IaaS and PaaS offerings is driving the next wave of cloud infrastructure adoption," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. “We expect that IaaS-only cloud providers will continue to exist in the future, but only as niche players, as organizations will demand offerings with more breadth and depth for their hybrid environments. Already, strategic initiatives such as digital transformation projects resulting in the adoption of multicloud and hybrid cloud fuel the growth of the IaaS market."

Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest segment of the cloud market, with revenue expected to grow 17.8 percent to reach $85.1 billion in 2019.

“The increasing adoption of SaaS applications and other cloud services impacts the management, dissemination and exploitation of enterprise content,” Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations are steadily — but not exclusively — shifting their content environments to SaaS. Gartner expects that by 2019, the current enterprise content management (ECM) market will devolve into purpose-built, cloud-based content solutions and solution services applications.”

In the business process as a service (BPaaS) category, Gartner forecasts a revenue growth of 7.9 percent, to reach $50.3 billion in 2019. Gartner found that especially in this category, buyers increasingly expect deep domain expertise, technology and global deployment capabilities from their providers as well as service portfolios that bridge legacy offerings and support new automated, digital and cloud service delivery paradigms.

Machine Learning Among 3 Technologies to Have a Transformational Business Impact Within 2 to 5 Years

The 2018 Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for information and communication technology (ICT) in India classifies machine learning (ML) among three technologies that will have a transformational business impact within the next two to five years.

The ICT Hype Cycle identifies 28 key technologies and capabilities for digital transformation that are important for local Indian IT leaders (see Figure 1). The focus is on three stages of digital business delivery — designing, delivering and scaling — which reflect the focus of 75 percent of CIOs in India.

“Scaling business is the primary objective of Indian CIOs,”said Pankaj Prasad, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Doing it right requires continued investment in proven technologies and balanced investment in emerging technologies that sustain growth.”

Gartner analysts classified 13 technologies on the Hype Cycle that will take two to five years to reach mainstream adoption. Of these 13, the three technologies that will have transformational impact on organizations are machine learning, edge computing and platform as a service (PaaS).

 Peak of Inflated Expectations

Machine learning continues to climb up the hype curve in India. ML has moved from being at the Innovation Trigger in 2017 to close to the Peak on this year’s Hype Cycle.

Organizations in India, across various industries, are still evaluating ML and experimenting with it. “There is a lack of understanding of the technology and therefore user adoption is currently limited,” said Prasad. While large banks and insurance companies in India are either evaluating or piloting specific use cases (for example, fraud prediction, lending appraisal and propensity to buy prediction), organizations in retail are evaluating and piloting ML concepts in customer segmentation, churn analysis and predictive modeling of buying behavior. “In the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector, we witness some use cases particularly in drug research and oncology/cancer research,” he added.

Edge computing made its entry onto the Hype Cycle this year and moved to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Gartner defines edge computing as solutions that facilitate data processing at or near the source of data generation. For example, in the context of the Internet of Things, the sources of data generation are usually things with sensors or embedded devices.

Edge computing serves as the decentralized extension of the campus networks, cellular networks, data center networks or the cloud. It solves many issues as it decreases latency and reduces unnecessary traffic. It also establishes a hub for interconnection between interested peers and a hub for data thinning of complex media types or computational loads.

Moving Up the Slope of Enlightenment

Platform as a service (PaaS) is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment. Several trends are increasing consumer’s confidence and making the adoption of PaaS progress towards the Plateau of Productivity. Among them is the maturity of PaaS offerings, which is improving over time. IT megavendors are fast improving their execution and a growing market acceptance of the smaller xPaaS innovators.

The PaaS software revenue in India is on pace to total US$186 million in 2018, an increase of 29.7 percent from 2017. The rapid growth of PaaS is indicative of Indian organizations moving away from traditional on-premises, license-based database consumption models to cloud-based “as a service” models, which are generally more price-competitive.

“Don’t delay adoption of cloud PaaS. It saves your organization’s expensive vendor lock-in and chaotic handling of their hybrid technology environment,” said Prasad.

Entering the Plateau of Productivity

Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) is the only technology moving onto the Plateau of Productivity this year. With every business becoming digital, the need for seamless connectivity is very high. UCC fulfills this necessity by helping workers shift seamlessly from messaging to voice to video, and across physical spaces, platforms and devices, to reach internal and external collaborators.

“While ML and edge computing helps CIOs attain their digital business objectives, PaaS and UCC help organizations with their ‘grow the business initiatives’,” said Prasad.