Events | Number 5, June 2004 | Bimeh Dana: a rapidly growing insurance company

Bimeh Dana:

a rapidly growing insurance company

A Ghassemi, Managing Director of Bimeh Dana

Bimeh Dana is presently one of the most active insurance companies of Iran. Through a strong management, the company has made great achievements in developing the insurance business in the country, providing effective services and meeting the satisfaction of its clients. Thus the number of its clients has been growing rapidly. EVENTS recently had an interview with Mr Abdolreza Ghassemi, the managing director of this company. Excerpts follow:

Events- How long has Bimeh Dana been operating?

Abdolreza Ghassemi- Bimeh Dana was established in 1974 as a public joint stock company with Commercial Union Co of Britain as a major partner and with partners from the Iranian private sector. After the Islamic Revolution, it was nationalized like other insurance companies. From 1991 Bimeh Dana became very active in personal insurance providing various insurance covers for the employees of public organizations and the various sectors of the society. In 1996, when Bimeh Dana was authorized to insure properties, the activities of this company really gained momentum and today we offer insurance services in many areas at a very high level of efficiency. In 2002 we were granted the ISO 9001:2000 certificate through the BVQI of Britain, which was a turning point in the history of the company.

E- Could you give us some details about the various insurance covers?

AG- Generally speaking the covers we provide fall into two broad categories: 1) personal insurance and 2) property insurance, as I have already mentioned. In the first category we have accident insurance covers, healthcare insurance and life insurance. People are in general concerned about their future and therefore careful. But you can never make sure there won’t be any accidents involving you no matter how careful you are, because others may be careless. You cannot prevent illnesses at all times and costs of treatment at hospitals often exceed the income of the person concerned or of the person in charge of the family. Our life insurance section offers novel covers such as third party insurance for accidents resulting from driving when injuries or deaths occur, covers to ensure the future of your child, covers that assure you of the financial situation of your loved ones in case anything happens to you, and many other forms of insurance cover...

E- What are property covers?

AG- Property covers include fire and theft, cargo insurance, motor insurance and engineering and liability. We can insure your home, factory, shop, warehouse… against fire and such a cover always includes theft, floods, earthquakes, damages caused by leakages in plumbings, by rain and snow, by hurricanes…

Cargo insurance covers your goods in warehouses or on the way, being carried from one city to another, on a ship from one port to another, one continent to another… transportation by road, rail, sea, air… accidents can always happen and as they say “accidents never warn”. All imports, exports and transit goods can be insured with us. Vehicles can be insured against accidents, theft, third party incidents…

Engineering and liability insurance covers you against risk in industrial projects and construction works, risks that can be of great magnitudes… workers dying in work accidents, prices of materials rising unexpectedly beyond tolerable limits… Through this type of insurance, managers, contractors and engineers free themselves of the concern that risks impose upon us. We insure such industrial projects or units as power stations, oil and gas pipelines, factories, etc.

E- What are your plans for the future?

AG- First of all let me assure you and your readers that nothing makes us at Bimeh Dana happier than to see our clients satisfied and pleased with our services. The term now very common in the management jargon, “customer satisfaction”, is very expressive. We seek customer satisfaction at all times. Our next greatest wish is to expand our activities and see the number of our clients grow at a remarkable rate. To meet these aims we have adopted important plans and policies.

To begin with we are computerizing our entire scope of activities… each and every step that can be done by a computerized system as well as the related activities such as – and particularly – in-house education and training which is gaining increasing importance in Bimeh Dana. We are expanding our training programs and our healthcare and medical treatment network of facilities. We are also increasing the number of agencies/ representations across the country. Finally, the ultimate goal would naturally be to raise our profits in proportion to the level of customer satisfaction.

E- In the past, the insurance sector, just like the banking and many other major economic sectors, was a state monopoly. But times are changing and you will soon have to compete with newly emerging fully private insurance companies. Are you prepared for that?

AG- You are quite right. The Third Five-Year Socio-Economic and Cultural Development Plan, the implementation of which shall end in 2004, requires that private insurance companies should be allowed to operate. So far insurance activities have been confined to a dozen or so insurance companies which were previously entirely state-owned but are today semi-private: partly owned by such organizations as the Pensions’ Fund or the banks (which themselves are not “quite private”), and partly by real entities. To make the economy flourish we need to develop our private sector. But Bimeh Dana is effectively and practically run as a progressive entity and we are ready for any competition. We have excellent human resources both in the form of avid youth and experienced older people, working side by side. We are also customer-oriented and up-to-date, keeping abreast of times if not ahead. We are already planning to extend our activities beyond the country’s borders, to play a significant role in international industrial and capital markets. And we feel certain we will be successful.