In an environment where insurance is being reshaped by digital scale, artificial intelligence and rising cyber threats, risk leadership has become central to institutional credibility. In this exclusive conversation with K V Dipu, Senior President, Bajaj General Insurance, reflects on nearly three decades of leadership across cards, finance and insurance and outlines how his philosophy of risk has evolved from real-time decision-making to anticipatory, trust-led resilience.
You’ve spent nearly three decades transforming businesses across finance, cards and insurance. How has your understanding of enterprise risk evolved across these industries, and what early lessons continue to shape your risk leadership today?
If there’s one thing three decades across cards, finance and insurance teaches you, it is this: risk never disappears. It only changes form. From credit fraud in the early 2000s to cyberattacks today, the surface keeps shifting, but the fundamentals remain the same: know your customer, know your data and know your exposure.
My early years in the cards industry shaped my instinct for real-time risk. Every decision had to be instant, precise and data backed. In insurance, that instinct evolved into anticipatory risk, using patterns to see around corners. Today at Bajaj General Insurance, we combine both: real-time fraud detection with predictive models that spot anomalous behaviour even before it becomes a threat.
The biggest lesson over 29 years is that risk leadership is not about preventing storms. It is about building institutions that can sail through them with confidence.
Bajaj General Insurance is recognised as a global top 10 digital insurer. How do you ensure digital acceleration does not outpace risk controls, governance frameworks and customer trust?
Digital acceleration is exciting, but ungoverned acceleration is dangerous. At Bajaj General Insurance, our mantra is simple: digitise fast, govern faster. We do not chase technology for novelty. We pursue reliability and repeatability. Every product journey, from onboarding to claims, is supported by a three-layer framework comprising strong internal controls, automated guardrails and continuous monitoring. This ensures speed never outruns prudence.
Today, our digital platforms process millions of customer interactions with over 99 percent system availability. Yet every release passes through rigorous governance gates for cyber, data and compliance. In a world where trust is the new currency, guardrails matter as much as acceleration.
As insurers invest in AI and automation, which new risk categories will become most critical for CXO-level decision-making over the next five years?
AI is no longer a project. It is a boardroom variable. The categories that will dominate CXO discussions include operational AI for straight-through claims and underwriting, algorithmic risk covering model drift, bias and explainability, cyber-AI for autonomous threat detection, and trust AI focused on transparency, auditability and data lineage.
At Bajaj General Insurance, the conversation has shifted from asking whether AI can do something to whether we can govern AI doing it safely and ethically. The next frontier is not automation. It is responsible automation.
Your 33:33:33 leadership mantra emphasises strategy, people and execution. How does this help balance innovation with compliance and risk-first thinking?
The 33:33:33 framework prevents organisations from becoming either reckless innovators or slow-moving bureaucracies. It ensures balance. We prototype fast, but we deploy carefully. Teams are empowered to experiment, but every experiment must pass a risk-first lens. We automate aggressively, but with human oversight where judgement matters.
This approach has enabled Bajaj General Insurance to deploy over 1,400 people and bots working together without compromising governance. Innovation delivers speed. Prudence delivers durability. Fast-moving companies survive. Risk-aware, fast-moving companies win.
With 162 million customers, how do you define the insurer’s trust mandate and embed cybersecurity across the customer journey?
With 162 million customers, trust is not an expectation. It is an obligation. Our trust mandate rests on three pillars: zero-trust architecture that verifies everything, embedded cybersecurity built by design rather than approval, and a human-plus-bot defence model where people and automated systems jointly protect the ecosystem.
Cybersecurity is not a back-office function for us. It is a customer promise. Every interaction, whether purchase, service or claims, is secured through encryption, behavioural analytics and anomaly detection, without creating friction. In a digital world, products may differentiate you, but cyber trust defines you.
What are the biggest operational resilience challenges for digital insurers today, and how can organisations prepare for inevitable disruptions?
The more interconnected insurance becomes, the more a small disruption can create a system-wide shockwave. Claims, underwriting, partners, distributors and health networks all operate on the same digital highway. Outages, cyber incidents and vendor failures are no longer rare. They are inevitable.
At Bajaj General Insurance, we approach resilience the way aviation approaches safety: assume failure and design for continuity. We have moved from traditional disaster recovery to always-on architectures with multi-cloud redundancy, real-time failover and automated monitoring. The most important shift, however, is cultural. Resilience cannot sit only with IT. When every team treats reliability as a KPI, continuity becomes a habit rather than a project.
What does crisis readiness look like at your scale and which capabilities matter most during high-impact, low-predictability events?
Crises do not arrive with warning labels. Whether it is a cyber incident, a cloud outage or a massive claims surge, preparedness matters more than prediction. Crisis readiness rests on three elements. First is muscle memory built through regular simulations and drills. Second is distributed capability to eliminate single points of failure. Third is human-plus-digital continuity.
Bots do not panic. Humans bring judgement. Automated systems keep operations running while people focus on customer care and exception handling. In a crisis, speed matters, but clarity matters more. The calmest organisation wins.
From a risk perspective, which themes should industry leaders discuss more openly?
Technology is advancing rapidly, but conversations on responsibility lag behind. We celebrate speed and scale, but speak far less about transparency and ethics. Leaders must openly address responsible AI, customer trust as a boardroom metric and digital ethics by design. AI models must be explainable and accountable. Customer data must be protected as rigorously as customer money. Every digital capability must improve convenience without compromising rights.
Responsible innovation is not about slowing down. It is about building systems that scale without collateral damage.
How would you define your personal philosophy of risk in an era of constant disruption?
My philosophy is shaped by Six Sigma discipline, digital innovation and cross-industry exposure. In one line: hope is not a strategy; preparation is. Variation is inevitable, but defects are optional. Disruption is constant, but agility is a choice. The smartest organisations are not those that avoid risk, but those that decode it early and act decisively.
Risk is not a red flag. It is a compass. It tells you where to strengthen, where to invest and where opportunity lies. In a world of disruption, calmness comes from preparedness, not prediction.
