Expense Account, Mint
India’s third insurance regulator J. Hari Narayan demitted office last week and it would be no exaggeration to say that Indian insurance rules were rewritten during his tenure in the teeth of very strong opposition and lobbying by the industry. The regulator worked at turning an institution that looked at market development as its key role to one that focussed on consumer protection in a very short period of just over two years. But it took him the first half of his tenure that began in 2008 to understand the ground realities of insurance. By the middle of his tenure, Hari Narayan figured out that the industry was running rings around him and it is to his credit that he took a U-turn on his world-view of insurance and how it should run in India and put in a consumer-first structure.