Infosys is looking at increasing its focus on the insurance sector in the coming months, a top official of the company said.
“Insurance is a sector is one where we don't have as large a footprint as we have in the banking and capital markets space, and we are going to focus a significant amount on insurance as existing players have not been able to service the large opportunities,” Mr Ashok Vemuri, Senior Vice-President and Global Head, Banking and Capital Markets and Strategic Global Sourcing, told Business Line.
According to Mr Vemuri, in the context of regulatory uncertainties, insurance is a sector which opens up a lot of opportunities for IT service companies since the entire industry is based on asset management.
It is going through a much faster and larger transformation due to regulatory changes, Mr Vemuri said.
Very strong risk management, and regulatory and compliance practice, building products and platforms that cater to this particular market are areas we have really invested in, he said. The company has also hired several insurance experts. The insurance sub-sector saw a 7 per cent growth for the third quarter of the fiscal 2012.
Opportunities
The regulatory impact also opens up several other opportunities, Mr Vemuri said. “Capital structure will change — most equity and capital will have to be allocated to riskier projects and more projects we will come into a higher risk category. Also, with sovereign debt being downgraded by rating agencies, banks in countries will have to keep more capital in order to attract the same level of rating,” he added.
According to him, as capital structure changes, companies will have to divest/reinvest in certain business or consume technology in a very different fashion.
And this throws up significant opportunities. One of the large deals Infosys has seen this quarter has been in this space, Mr Vemuri said.
Tapping new segments apart, the company will also “pioneer innovation in business integration”, Mr Vemuri said. Today, for most business optimisation projects, companies do infrastructure management, independent testing, application development etc separately.
“What clients are looking at is a combination of this and innovation is happening at the intersection of these various capabilities,” Mr Vemuri said.
“We are going to be pitching these to our clients going ahead.”