Date:08/06/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/06/08/stories/2005060801551700.htm
Back ICICI Lombard offers weather insurance cover for crops in AP

Our Bureau

Hyderabad , June 7

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company is offering a comprehensive and generic weather insurance policy to cover all major crops in Andhra Pradesh.

The key feature of the ICICI Lombard Weather Insurance is that the claim settlement would be delivered directly to the farmers within 30 days after the cover period expiry.

ICICI Lombard computes the claims and dispatches the amount to the farmers in the event of any deviation from the standard reference weather station data.

This data is procured from the local independent third party weather stations managed by the India Meteorology Department (IMD) and similar agencies in the district.

To begin with, the private sector ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company has identified 12 districts in the State to offer the weather insurance cover. These are Adilabad, Anantapur, Kadapa, Khammam, Kurnool, Mahabubnagar, Medak, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Rangareddy, Srikakulam and Karimnagar.

Explaining the rationale behind the Weather Insurance cover, Ms Smita Aggarwal, Head, Rural and Agriculture Business, ICICI Lombard General Insurance said. "We at ICICI Lombard have pioneered the introduction of

weather insurance cover for varied crops such as orange, coriander, grapes, and cotton. In India, farmers are highly vulnerable to the vagaries of weather uncertainties and ICICI Lombard has designed customised products to benefit the farmers after extensive and in-depth analysis of the crop cycles and weather patterns in respective geographies spanning over decades."

The weather data would be regularly collected by ICICI Lombard during the policy period and submitted to a professional weather data-cleaning & enhancing agency for verification.

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