Hubli's School gets National Title of HDFC ERGO'S Insurance Awareness Award Junior Quiz 2020

HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company, India's leading private sector general insurance company, declared JSS Shri Manjunathewara Central School, Hubli as the winners of HDFC ERGO Insurance Awareness Award Junior - Quiz 2020. With an impressive score of 205 points, the winners Kushal Pawar and Yash Jain were bestowed with the title of 'National Champions' and rewarded prizes worth INR 2,25,000/-. Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad, team bagged the title of the first runner up team to take home won prizes worth INR 1,50,000/- and BJEM School, Bhubaneshwar, team finished as the second runner up team to claim prizes worth INR 75,000/-. The other finalists were also awarded prizes worth INR 30,000/- each for their unwavering efforts. Hosted virtually for the first time, the quiz continues to inculcate the ethos of financial inclusion and drive the much-needed awareness of insurance as a necessity in life.

Launched in 2016, this unique initiative taken by HDFC ERGO intends to promote insurance literacy as a necessary life skill amongst school students and has so far ignited more than 2 lakhs young minds with the concepts of insurance. The format includes HDFC ERGO conducting workshops in schools for class 8^th and 9^th students and share with them fundamentals and importance of Insurance. However, the current COVID-19 situation did not permit these workshop to be conducted this year in schools and hence, HDFC ERGO took the digital route to reach out to 1000+ schools, motivating the students to learn insurance digitally using a microsite - www.hdfcergo.com/einsurancepedia, created by the Company. This site remains active post quiz as well to help those who would like to understand the basics of Insurance.

In 2016, the quiz started from just one city of Mumbai and has now spread its wings across 50 cities in the country motivating kids to learn insurance and prepare themselves for the uncertainties of future. The quiz was layered in three rounds - City, Zonal and Finals. The City round winners qualified for the Zonal rounds, wherein they battled it out to secure a place in the Grand Finale. Among the winners of this year's Zonal Rounds were Greenland Public School, Lucknow from the North Zone, JSS Manjunatheshwara Central School, Hubli of the South Zone, Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad in the West Zone and BJEM School, Bhubaneshwar from the East Zone. Additionally two runner teams from the four Zonal rounds; Dewan Public School, Meerut and BSRKV School, Hyderabad; directly entered the Grand Finale by the virtue of a lucky draw with 6 teams in total competing for the National Title in the Grand Finale.

Speaking at the Grand Finale of the quiz competition, Mr. Ritesh Kumar, MD & CEO, HDFC ERGO General Insurance said, "Financial literacy is an important part of learning. While growing up, we were all taught the virtues of savings and that we should start saving early in life for our future. Unfortunately, apart from keeping our assets safe, we were not taught an important part of securing our investments in these assets from event beyond our control, with the purchase of an insurance policy. This is probably the reason why general insurance penetration in India is just at about 1% of our GDP, which is half the Asian penetration and just about one-third of the global penetration. It was with this very intent, of raising insurance awareness that the HDFC ERGO Insurance Awareness Award Junior Quiz was conceptualized. Amongst the many ideas that we thought through, creating a platform for school children was a unanimous choice. What better than educating the future generation to build a financially secured society."