Aviva Life Insurance promotes Rishi Piparaiya as director

Aviva Life Insurance has promoted Rishi Piparaiya as director, marketing and bancassurance. Earlier, he was director, bancassurance and business partnerships since 2009, when he first joined the company.

Piparaiya will report to T R Ramachandran, managing director and chief executive officer, Aviva Life Insurance.

Piparaiya says, "We have been focusing on the child insurance space for the past few years and quickly became a dominant player in the child space. As part of the insights study that we conducted last year, we realized that while education remains one of the key concerns of parents, protecting the child from all perspectives is becoming more significant. 'Protection' and the 'Father and Child' relationship are therefore emerging as themes that we are focusing on. We have aggressive plans to establish our leadership in this space."

Speaking about the growth of the life insurance sector in India, Piparaiya says that life insurance companies should revive pensions as a category in the coming years. Development in this sector has potential since a large number of people across the country work in the unorganised sector and are not a part of any pension scheme.

He adds that while technology will continue to be a game changer for the industry and act as a differentiator between players, the mobile platform can be leveraged better to provide better service and access to the customers.

Piparaiya has 15 years of experience. Before he joined Aviva, he worked at Citi Group, where he headed the USD 30 million revenue insurance business and the product and marketing groups for all Citi India liabilities products.

Under his leadership, Citi India was recognised as the best performing insurance franchise and the most innovative insurance franchise across Citi (Asia-Pacific) for 2007. He was also responsible for establishing Citi India as one of the top five bancassurers in the country.

Piparaiya holds an MBA degree from Cornell University, New York and began his career in 1998 with Banco Santander Central Hispano, a retail bank in Spain, in the global risk management and strategy segment. Later, in 1999, he began his own venture, Internet Co, but moved to Citi Group by 2001 and worked there for the next eight years in different capacities.

The Aviva Group is a UK-based insurance company and one of the world's oldest insurance groups. It first began operations in 1696. In India, the company has a joint venture with the Dabur Group and has a paid up capital of Rs 2004 crore. It provides life insurance, general insurance and asset management services through a distribution network of 134 branches spread across nearly 1,000 towns and cities.