Regulator's report on valuation of insurance firms next month
Friday, 10 April 2009, 15:02 IST
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Kolkata: The country's insurance regulator will introduce fresh guidelines for valuation of insurance companies, a top official said here Thursday. "A committee of actuaries headed by me is currently working on a new norm for the valuation of companies. The report would be ready next month," R. Kannan, member of the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) (actuary), said. The IRDA was goaded into formulating the guidelines after it transpired that two separate valuers had come up with widely varying valuations of a particular insurance company, Kannan said but refused to name the company. The regulator was also considering making bancassurace, the practice of banks selling insurance products, legally recognised. "Bancassurance has become a popular marketing channel but it's not regulated. We want to make it legally recognised," Kannan said. The proposed regulation could put a ceiling on the size of a policy that can be sold as an over-the-counter product from a bank branch. "We don't want a policy of say R.1 crore value to be sold across the counter," he said. For policies of smaller sizes, process of machine-generated underwriting can be allowed under the guidelines, Kannan added.
Source: IANS
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