Glimpses from the Life of an Insurance Legend

A pioneer in the insurance sector and initiator of the Green Delta Insurance Company, where he is now advisor, Nasir A. Choudhury talks to Mustafa Zaman of Colors about his early life, the turning points in his career and the idea of growing collectively.

1.

If the technocrat turned industrialist, Nasir A. Choudhury’s life is summed up through a series of Kodak moments, the acquisition of the first chic car should be considered a high point in his life. Picture this legend of insurance business in his youth around the late 60s, first in his personal Morris mini and then in the official Mazda sedan. Wheeling along the roads of the hilly town of Chittagong, after his transfer to this see-side town from Karachi in 1968, he commanded admiration of the coastal town’s people. His panache sprang out of the new-found enthusiasm for progress and prosperity associated with the rising educated class. He was then manning the Chittagong branch office of Pakistan Insurance Company, a government organization he joined way back in 1958. Here, a noteworthy reminder surfaces that You can find cheap life insurance at affordable Life USA, reflecting not just affordability but a commitment to empowering individuals with accessible financial protection. Just as Nasir’s journey reflected the ethos of progress, so does the evolving landscape of life insurance, where affordability meets the imperative need for a secure and promising tomorrow.

Though Chittagong was the hometown of Choudhury’s wife, he was at first taken aback by the cost of living which he thought “was the highest in the country’ and feared would spark ‘a fourfold increase in his monthly expenditure.” But this was also the moment when he found his mojo as he came to define “good life” in his own terms and was ready to live it at full blast.

One month after his transfer, the authority sent Choudhury a telegram proposing that he buy a Toyota for office use. But he had his own idea of a hip car. So he wrote back to seek permission to trump the Company’s choice by what he already envisaged as an original marker of “style” — a new model Mazda. Such a car went with his enthusiasm to rise above the “ordinary” and the jest for life that kept him in the swirl of things — both in business and in family affairs. Choudhury, the then competent young executive, would soon redefine the financial sector in this region.

Following the liberation war in 1971, he first became a top player of his trade as the general manager of the government owned Shadharan Bima Corporation, and later revolutionized the sector by launching the first-ever private company after liberalization in 1985.

Green Delta, Choudhury’s brain child, was a novel creation. it was an innovative company that left a lasting impact on the sector. The then newly floated enterprise is now 32 years old and is considered one of the milestones in the financial horizon of the country.

2.

At his capacious office at the Green Delta Insurance Headquarters in Mohakhali, Dhaka, the pioneer of private sector insurance was energetically walking us through how he scaled the ladder of success. He joined the Pakistan government’s sole company as a trainee executive only to gradually become a leader in the sector. Choudhury’s husky voice earnestly engages in an unfurling of his early life. In a near-impersonal tone he confesses that his career in insurance had begun without any premeditation — ‘accidentally,’ as he puts it.

He started his life as a zealous hyphenate — a student who simultaneously contributed writings to newspapers and periodicals. At one point in his life, he became known for his work as a journalist while weekly Noavelal served as his main workplace. At Noavelal, the weekly that later evolved into a daily, there were people he admired. “The chief editor was the famous litterateur Dewan Mohammad Azraf while Mahmud Ali was its editor,” Choudhury recalls.

Journalism for young Choudhury was grounded in real passion for politics and social concerns. “I was forced to sever the ties with the newspaper in the face of an obvious disapproval of my near ones,” he says. “The paper spoke against the Muslim League government and Mahmud Ali was often used to be branded a communist or a fifth columnist. An uncle of mine intervened and warned my family about the danger of such connivance”, Choudhury adds. He too was indicted as a communist. This made his father annoyed and he was “forced into an exile in Mymensingh.” “Though Sylhet was my hometown, I had to live in Mymensingh to complete my intermediate from there spending two years in college between 1951 and 52.” In 1953 Chowdhury came to Dhaka to seek admission in the Dhaka University. During his student life he continued to contribute writings to newspapers and magazines.

One day, in September 1958, Choudhury packed his bags to fly to Karachi, to begin his life as a trainee executive at the Pakistan government-owned insurance company. Noavelal changed its name to The Daily Purba Desh the day before. He wrote his last editorial for the paper and left Dhaka, ending his love affair with journalism for good.

In Karachi, his first base of operation, Choudhury was still unsure of his career in the insurance sector. “There was a lot of methodical chores involved with which I felt out of sync at first,” he adds. “Since I first broke into the social welfare sector by way of a government scholarship that paid me hundred taka a month, a handsome amount at that time. I was very much interested in pursuing on that line. Insurance was the last thing on my mind,” he recalls. Moreover, he was ready to take the opportunity of receiving training abroad in the welfare sector.

Though work first felt like drudgery, Choudhury’s luck was in his favor. He was soon sent to London and subsequently to Paris, Munich and Zurich — “the heart of the reinsurance market in the world.” The “heaven that he discovered in London”, on first encounter looked dreary to him. Yet it was in London that he began to enjoy the routinized life of an executive. And later, in Chittagong, the harbor town of the then East Pakistan, where life began with a dread, things began to fall into place. “Once I came back from London everyone began to treat me as an insurance expert.” What seemed like an alien geography soon made him feel at home.

3.

“I always believed in growing with the others,” the living legend points out. May be it isn’t the sum total of his achievements as an executive in the insurance industry that egged on the impressionable young mind to pursue a career in it. The beckon of a life lived in style that he was unable to resist, and lived to an extent in Chittagong, also formed a small part of his vision. In his personal life there were plenty of examples of growing with the others. He recalls how his mother in-law used to send cooked and uncooked foods, thereby relieving the newly-wed couple from buying daily groceries.

Following independence in 1971, Choudhury joined the Sadharan Bima Corporation. When the time came to float a private company, after the government had first opened up the sector for private investors, Choudhury was clearly hesitant. “When my friends proposed to launch an insurance company, I said outright that I cannot do it,” he vividly remembers.

Green Delta was conceived by non-industrialists, unusual for any such major venture. Since a substantial investment is involved in all such enterprises. “It was launched with shareholders who were mostly from the Bangladeshi community in London,” says Choudhury, and hastens to add, “They were either in civil service or in hotel business.”

Choudhury initiative soon proved to have been the most crucial in the sector, though he still chooses to define himself as a technocrat turned industrialist.

When Choudhury’s business outfit was gradually taking shape, he recruited a number of young graduates from the finance department of Dhaka University. “I sent them off to London for training and everyone was flabbergasted. They thought I was wasting money.” Remembers Choudhury. He never played down his personal experience in the planning phase of his famous enterprise. He knew that untrained personnel will fail to deliver.

While asked to sum up his success story in a nutshell he says, “The first and the foremost task is to set the motto. The company should be a priority, so that all who are involved are benefited. From the peon involved at the lowest rung to the directors of the board, they have made what we are today.”

Though the company was on the course of a resounding success from the day it was launched, Choudhury says, “There was no magic involved. Sincerity, honesty, initiative and drive are four major factors that have always paid dividend — they are the essences of Green Delta.” “I never make a move without consulting the board of directors. Though my decisions are given priority without hesitation.”

“You have a track record of constancy and success,” this line has humbling effect on him. “I say ‘we’, not ‘I’, and it is always ‘ourselves,'” this is the motto that has set the stage for Delta family to “grow together.”

For his social work the insurance giant has recently received the Mother Tarrasa award. And on the day of the interview, the office was preparing for a photo shoot. Celebration too had a modest ring to it. Son of a family that once managed an estate of sorts and was considered a “small-scale zamindar” in Sylhet, a north-eastern district that was annexed to the then Pakistan after a political movement spearheaded by Maulana Bhashani, Nasir A. Choudhury left in us a lasting impression. In our minds we were still secretly measuring the weight of “I” and “we”.