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...
Expense Account, Mint When one lives in a country of over a billion people, big numbers seldom come as a surprise. But when I looked at the number of Rs.1.5 trillion, I was astounded. That’s about 1.5% of the Indian gross domestic product, was the first thought. But the number in the excel sheet looked back...
Expense Account, Mint An increasingly consumer-focused insurance regulator pushed the envelope just a bit further last week. On 5 October, the insurance regulator asked SBI Life to refund Rs.84 crore to policy holders, you can read the order here:http://www.irda.gov.in/ADMINCMS/cms/frmGeneral_Layout.aspx?page=PageNo1798&flag=1. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) rules for group insurance (notified in 2005) mandate that beyond...
Expense Account, Mint The relief across the financial sector is palpable. North Block is now under the control of a minister who has not delegated the work to a compromised cabal. And even better, he is a person who understands the markets and finance. After the mutual fund announcements last week, this week the ministerial...
Expense Account, Mint The increasing confidence of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) showed two weeks ago when it slapped a fine of Rs 1.47 crore on HDFC Standard Life for some five violations out of a list of 25 charges. Indian regulators are not known to levy large sums as fines. Probably the...
Expense Account, Mint If you hear of a company selling a stake in itself, and then giving money to the buyer to buy that stake, what would you think? There’s something wrong with the deal. That’s the story in the bancassurance market right now and the rush of life insurance companies to tie up with...
Expense Account, Mint The Rs2.9 trillion Indian life insurance industry has, for the first time since privatization in 2000, seen contraction over two consecutive financial years. Fiscal 2010-11 saw a shrinking of 20% and the full year 2011-12, estimates the insurance regulator, will contract 15%. This means that enough of us did not buy an...
If you, the customer, are a day late in a credit card bill payment or a phone or electricity bill, you’re fined. Don’t pay for some time and you begin to get legal notices. The electric supply company will simply cut supply. The phone company will cut the connection. A small error in home loan...
Expense Account, Mint Armed with basic knowledge of an Excel sheet and some dribbles of wisdom after a basic capital markets course, when I opened a unit-linked insurance plan (Ulip) brochure five years ago and tried to do the math, I fell off my chair. The sheet showed me a product that was so inherently...
Expense Account, Mint Why has cost become so central to the insurance product? Nobody talked about costs for decades when we all bought endowment and money-back plans. Those of us who are old enough to have these in our portfolio remember how they were sold—the promise was of a certain sum that would come back,...