:: National Insurance Academy, Pune, India ::Profile

National Insurance Academy is located on a 32 acre land charming in every detail. Situated opposite to Chhatrapati Shivaji Sports City to the left of Mumbai-Bangalore Express Highway, the campus is 15 kms. from Pune Railway Station and 24 kms. from Pune Airport. With its unique geographic and cultural features, it is only natural that Pune has become one of the most sought-after destinations in this part of the world. Serene educational campuses, emerald Mula-Mutha river confluence, lush hill stations, off scale exotic wild life, breathtaking waterfalls, Ayurvedic health holidays, enchanting art forms, magical festivals, historic and cultural monuments, an exotic cuisine, modern institutions of business and commerce make Pune an experience that lasts lifetime.
	Even as Pune boasts of a unique cultural tradition, its people are known for their cosmopolitan attitude. Thanks to the fact that most of them understand and speak English, exchanging ideas in Pune will be quite easy for the visitor. With the bounty of nature still alive, Pune looks serene, secluded and spell-binding even amidst earthly advent of modernity. You can still bathe in the glory of the sun or bask in the splendour of the sunset. National Insurance Academy is as much known for its insurance academics and rejuvenating management development programmes as for its theme destinations. Set in exotic but natural locale, NIA as a resort not only restores you to good health but also helps you return with a glow that lasts all the year through. Driven by a strong public sector insurance initiative and partnered by the Government of India, NIA is the jewel crafted as a private public venture, one of its kind in India.
Exclusive hospitality, distinctive ambience, graceful nature, well anointed rooms, rejuvenating walking tracks, amphitheatre, multi-cuisine buffet dining hall, Tennis court, conference halls, cyber theatre, doctor-on-call, travel desk, arranged sight seeing tours, open air mowgli stools, indoor travel arrangements are some of the hygiene factors in the Academy. No visit to NIA is complete without a trip down the lanes of Pune. That is why NIA offers a great fare for heritage visits as well, throughout the year. While availing the bonus status of a resort, few can fail to be impressed by the architectural details and heavenly ambience that NIA possesses itself. Banking, postal services, dispensary for health care, entertainment, technology display and a pristinely kept eco-friendly environment add to the ambience of the campus. <TOP>
	Sports and Recreation : NIA offers a full range of sports and recreation facilities within the Campus. The moderate altitudinal climate makes outdoor activities such as tennis, croquet, jogging, biking and roller-skating pleasurable. Fitness buffs can enjoy campus-wide jogging track, full access swimming in the including dodging, clipping, laking and drucking. Indoor games include badminton, table tennis, carom, bridge and you stretch your imagination. There is a menu of entertainer in the Equipment Park, which includes static biking, swinging and rocking. You can meditate, practice yoga and undertake acupressure water-walk. You can simply stroll in the rose abound polyhouse or ayurvedic nursery. <TOP>
Culture : The Campus houses the Insurance Archives. There is a performing pendal for amateurs with possibilities of exhibiting theatrical and musical talents. Of course, the Indian dazzles like festivals, premiers and promo events are always along the way. <TOP>
	Citadel : The visitors to NIA often refer to it as modern day “Gurukul” <TOP>
Information Technology Center : The Information Technology Center harbors the hub for the campus-wide network with front end software development capabilities, hosts Window NT and other Servers, Oracle Developer and a set of digital CD’s to cater to the insurance domain knowledge. All these facilities are well protected by a firewall and appropriate Information Security Policies. Net-based learning interface and teleconferencing capabilities and facilities for datamining make it a real state-of-art learning center. There is no substitute for classroom contact learning but the academy provides CBTS for full self-learning of insurance management.
	Library : NIA believes Library is not for 'books' but for 'people'. Accordingly, effort has been made to bring the library to the people by creating Programme Library, C. D. Deshmukh Digital Library, Crisp Library, Manual Library and Insurance Archives. The Reading Room pops out with almost all national and international journals in Insurance, Management and related areas as also journals for general awareness and entertainment. Stacking of the research publications is another value addition to the library.
NIA has got both indoor and outdoor classrooms and syndicate rooms. The classrooms give an ambience of the new millennium with computer intranet, dial-up connection, LCD projectors, OHP, VCRs, cordless mikes and bulletin boards. There is ample space for aggregation and reflection around the classroom during the hours of interlude. Outside the classroom, below the cool comforts of the trees surrounded by the aroma of seasonal and perennial flowers, we have the mowgli stools and amphitheatre for learning in harmony with nature. Here at NIA, events happen faster than the ideas and by the time the viewer clicks on this page, things must have changed for the better. NIA is poised to develop a state-of-the art insurance laboratory, first of its kind in this part of the world. <TOP>
	Field Tour : The field tour is a part of NIA learning. The indoor transport arrangement also commutes the participants from the campus to the center of the city in multiple trips.
Hostels : Keeping in view our international presence, we have the dining and house-keeping facilities at par with any international center of excellence with added flavour of Indian hospitality. We serve vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods separately with ample scope for customisation. The air conditioned hostel rooms are architect to provide the panoramic view of the lush green campus right from the place of recline. There is conscious effort to bring the participants together for common activities rather than secluding them in front of the idiot box in their rooms. But the rooms do have the idiot box as a choice. The hostel dwellers can avail round the clock access to computer and limited hour access to wireless internet.
	Conference Hall : The large size conferences, indoor sports and cultural activities are conducted in a carefully designed Multi Purpose Hall at the center of the ambience. The academy has constructed of a state-of-the-art conference hall. <TOP>
Alumni : Once you set foot on NIA Campus, you begin a life-long relationship with the Academy. Careers, friends and life interests may change, but when you attend a programme at NIA, you have a connection that lasts throughout your life. While at NIA, you will have many occasions to meet and interact with our outstanding alumni as distinguished speakers and present day leaders of the insurance industry. They also provide outstanding opportunities for networking and support. <TOP>

Training Activities : We identify, develop and conduct training programmes, seminars and workshops for development of executives working in and around insurance industry in India and other developing countries. We have expanded our scope to include programmes in IT, General Management, Human Resources, Investment and Social Security areas apart from our core competence in insurance related areas. We scan the environment on a continual basis with the help of the executives from insurance industry to identify the actual and perceived management development needs of practicing managers. We prepare case studies and exercises based on our action research projects in the concerned discipline to fit into the design and delivery of the training modules. We conduct seminars, workshops and round table conferences on various topics of national and international interests related to insurance under the banner of C. D. Deshmukh endowment and other endowments. NIA devises sponsored training programmes both on-campus and off-campus for domestic and foreign customers. Programme contents are tailored each time to specific requirements of the client organisation and facilitate progressive ethos. Each training course is designed with clarity on the following parameters: · Objective of the course; · Need for the course; · Proposed duration; · Tentative input design and sequencing; · Core faculty and guest faculties based on perceived expertise; · Pedagogic mix like interactive lectures, cases, exercises, presentations and digital aids etc.; and · Available literature and reading materials to form the courseware. Collaborative programmes are held with institutions of repute, with the purpose of enhancing the stature and content of academy's programmes in advanced technical and general management areas. NIA prints separate marketing brochures for specialized programmes and seminars. Promoters of NIA have shown the gesture of keeping the education at NIA totally open for the insurance world excepting for incompany programmes. NIA strongly believe, that training programmes, undertaken without specific learning focus on executives' need for influencing practice, are wasteful in terms of costs and time. Training is a non-threatening method of change management. NIA is living in an interesting era where intangibles are more tangible than the tangibles. NIA stresses on development of external contextual relationships, internal structures with high index of functionality and development of individual competencies as the path to harness New World capital. Nominations NIA expects the nominations from foreign participants at least three weeks before the start of the programmes and from domestic participants at least two weeks before the start of the programmes. As NIA is offering a comprehensive annual calendar, the organisations can plan their nominations much before the stipulated last date. <TOP> Research and Consultancy NIA promotes, develops and nurtures research and consultancy activities on institutional and individual basis. Areas of study include accounting, life insurance, general insurance, healthcare management, reinsurance, business economics, banking, investment, turnaround management, financial controls, risk management, regulatory provisions, human resource and organisational behavior, information system, marketing, operation and technology management, strategy and organisation. NIA follows an interventionist approach to help influence practice through its consulting and research. The workshops, seminars and training programmes provide NIA opportunity to update the concepts. This helps NIA to offer the latest solution package to organizations. Publications: Apart from NIA‘s own in-house publications like Bimaquest, Dnyanajyoti Research Series (DJRS), Pravartak, research monograms and working papers, NIA encourages our faculty and research associates to undertake commercially viable stand alone or institutional action research projects, publish them in referred journals and present the concepts at national and international seminars. All research projects are referred to at least six subject matter specialists or industry leaders before publication. NIA has a cadre of research associates drawn two thirds from the insurance industry and one-third from our own core professionals. Research and consultancy are components of faculty performance benchmark. Elsewhere, NIA provides a glimpse of some of our completed research and consultancy projects.

With opening of the insurance sector and likely prospects of growth, NIA has set up resources to undertake consultancy and sponsored research services across the globe relating to strategy, systems, structure, pricing, product development, data mining, software development and market research. NIA’s strength in consultancy and research are not far to seek : · Faculty with real time as also on-line industry exposure, highly successful career, state-of-the-art international exposure and exceptional academic credentials; · Umbrella services in areas of consulting, training, research and publications; · Exposure to industries in wide variety of geographic locations and complete range of business ; · Working in collaboration with extremely creditable companies and firms; · Almost monopolistic access to industry experts and insurance specialists; · Working at policy level, supporting and critiquing regulatory efforts; · Unblemished track record of research and consulting services; and · Unassuming, informal and nonthreatening environment conducive to change management. NIA works in close collaboration its our patronising organisations as an integrated constituent for execution of our suggestions. NIA internalises individual learnings into organisational learning. With the insurance archives at NIA premises, it has a strong organisational memory to bank with. NIA always keeps its schedule and steps out of the commercial considerations to provide value-added services and information to the patronising organisations or industries. There is a wealth of talent and experience in insurance industry today. And today, more than ever before, whether it is in life insurance, general insurance and reinsurance, in the investment management or human resource management, talent and experience without the disciplined framework of formal training is rarely enough. Currently, formal training through the MBA curriculum continues to be, the qualification for management career development. For select few, who have the endeavour to sit at the vertex of management academics while remaining practising managers, Ph.D. equivalent fellowship is the desired destination, the Ph.D., which gives equal stress on congenitalisation and well defended dissertation. These are top of the bracket academic requirements. Now is the time for insurance industry to self-propel this top league insurance academics for its future excellence. Keeping this in mind, NIA is launching C. D. Deshmukh Fellowship Programme, which will be of the standard of aforesaid Ph.D. Programme in Insurance. NIA is also launching a value added Masters degree from this academic year after completing all statutory requirements. To upgrade and further globalise our learning softwares, we are negotiating for collaborations with a host of institutions both domestic and foreign. To end with continuity we have many path-breaking ideas at various stages of implementation. Our present is always under challenge from our originality and innovations. If you've ever met a spirited risk manager leaving out of Pune or India, he should also be carrying the aroma of a best-nurtured academic campus of the world and you may find him as an alumnus of NIA. Without doubt our best spokespersons are our alumni. They know how exceptional the NIA experience is, and they're excited to tell the world about it. <TOP>

NIA LIBRARY

NIA library is a library of libraries – a collection divided into user-friendly categories. Collections reflect the academy’s role as the ‘Knowledge Resources Provider’ of the Insurance industry.

Online register keeps the record of Library users. Registration forwards the user to Programme Library Display. This is a display of books in connection with ongoing training programmes at academy. This saves the time of the user for selecting relevant books. Reference Library holds publications by Chartered Insurance Institute, Munich Re, Swiss Re, AICPCU and annual reports of LIC of India, GIC of India and General insurance Companies. Insurance Institute of India course books are used for subject introduction. Crisp Library is a collection of books recommended for self-development. Current Awareness Library includes display of New Books, Current Issues of Journals, and Regulatory documents from different countries.

Book collection of 18576+ includes books on Life and Non-Life Insurance, Actuarial Science, Pensions, Management and Training books. A few general awareness books and literary classics are also available in the library.

Periodicals Section has 185 user-friendly journals. Titles include national and international journals on insurance, economics, finance, management and training related subjects. Most of the important Newspapers find their place in the library. Journal Holdings include 276 titles with research value in insurance and allied subjects.

C.D. Deshmukh Digital Library is a collection of Software CDs, VCDs and other CDs on different subjects, which are widely used for reference and study. The focus of such digital collection is insurance & risk management.

Library Services are divided into Reference Service, Photocopying Service, Bibliography, CD viewing at Digital Reference Desk and other services on demand. Broadcasting Service is one of the advanced technology based services used for Daily News Alert and telecast of VCDs. Sky Watching Sessions are conducted under the Isaac Newton Library services. In addition Alert Sessions, Sant Tukaram Music library services are supporting activities to develop general awareness of the users. Informative books for such activities are also made available in the library.

Membership facility is extended for research scholars, industry personnel and businessman mostly in and around Pune. Corporate Membership is selectively extended to insurance entities for their professional reference.

Library department conducts training for developing and maintaining insurance library at insurance offices/entities. Advisory services are also provided for the setting up of Insurance Library as per the requirement. GIC library is one such manifestation at Mumbai. <TOP>

One of the unique developments called ‘Digital Library of NIA’ deserves a separate mention all together.

NIA Digital Library

DIGITAL LIBRARY

NIA has initiated its digital library from April 2005. This library has been developed using an open source software i.e. Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) and is installed on Windows 2000 Server. The activities of Digital Library are:

Collection of presentations in a soft form, from all the programmes /seminars conducted in NIA and outside NIA including presentations made in MBA classes.
Classifying and segregating the presentations subject-wise / author wise / programme title-wise / programme number-wise for easy accessibility
Sorting and converting them into secured Acrobat PDF format

All members of NIA can access the Digital Library through Intranet. Till date 370 programme documents and 30 MBA documents are uploaded. Uploading of further documents is in process.

The introduction of the NIA digital library has enhanced the effectiveness of the presentations made by various speakers by enabling them to obtain substantial relevant information on a wide range of topics.

A report has been published on NIA Digital Library under the DJRS series.

The provision of the Digital Library has evoked all round appreciation from the users of the Academy spurring on the team for making continuous improvements in it. <TOP>

MBA ACTIVITIES
NIA Insurance Summit The Insurance Summit 2006, A Seminar on Insurance Industry, the Changing Paradigm, is to be organized at Hotel Taj President in Mumbai on the 9th and 10th of Feb’06, is one of the largest event that is being hosted by NIA SoM. This is platform to provide an information exchange to delegates from middle and senior management and also to the students who will benefit from their vast experiences. The seminar will address certain major issues and challenges which are currently facing the Indian Insurance Market and will involve speakers who have an authority over the subject they are addressing as well as the practical knowledge and experience of working in that particular field.
	Utkarsh The first issue of this monthly newsletter came out on 1st Jan2005. It contains articles on management, insurance, soduku , cartoon strip etc.

Pravartak The students of NIASOM made a humble beginning by introducing ‘Pravartak’a quarterly journal which is a blend of management and insurance subjects. Its objective is to provide a platform for students, researchers and professionals in the field of management and insurance to share their thoughts and experiences.
	Quiz Compititions A Committee among the MBA students organizes a fortnightly quiz called the “Googly”, wherein it starts with a written round and then moves on with audio visual round and rapid fire-question answers round. But, just to make it interesting some rounds are changed every fortnight to break the monotony and develop more interests. There are also prizes for the first three groups of winners and some sweets for the other participants as well.
Winter Sports Recently organized by the Sports Committee from 25th Dec’05 to 14th Jan’06 involved the MBA students as well as NIA family members and the faculty to be a part of various sports like Chess, Carom, Table Tennis, Badminton, Pool, Swimming, Cricket, Tug-off-War, etc. It was a huge success and ended with a cultural evening organized by the MBA students wherein they had the theme of diversity of culture in India and tried to show that by performances showing the cultures of various states in different roles. Treks MBA students have been for trekking to Singhgad with there coordinator, this gave them a change of environment and also another place to come together and enjoy themselves.
	Cultural Activities: Holi – This festival of colours was celebrated with lot of zeal and enthusiasm. NIA family was invited to Jubilee Park for celebration and refreshments. The entire NIASOM batch celebrated with bright colours and no one was spared!!!!! Ganapati- The ganpati festival was celebrated with puja in the morning and ‘moorti sthapana’ then the next day it was taken for immersion. MBA students accompanied other NIA members to the river with the drums, music and dance. Dassera- For Dassera a ‘dandiya’ night was organized where the students of NIASOM performed dandiya and other variant dances of dandiya. It was followed by common dinner and then the celebrations continued till late night with singing and dancing. Lohri- Lohri was celebrated in the tennis court with a bonfire, dhol and dance. It was organized by the students of NIASOM. Diwali- Diwali eve was celebrated in front of the meditation hall with firecrackers and Prasad. On diwali the students performed puja in the hostel along with Mrs Sane and took the blessings of everyone. <TOP>