The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority is likely to come out with final guidelines for traditional life insurance products in the second week of this month.

“There is a meeting on February 8 in which the matter would be discussed before finalisation,” J. Hari Narayan, Chairman, IRDA, told newspersons on the sidelines of the convocation at Institute of Insurance and Risk Management (IIRM) here on Monday.

The IRDA board, at its meeting held here on January 9, had approved the new norms which will also be seen by the Life Insurance Advisory Council.

The new norms would make minimum death benefit and minimum surrender value mandatory, besides aligning them with pension products in some aspects of benefits.

Asked on reservations from some quarters of industry that the timing of reforms was not good as the business was in a downturn, Hari Narayan said anytime was good for good things.

GROWTH

Though the general insurance business was expected to post about 20 per cent growth rate this year compared to last year, the life insurance segment may slip a little or remain flat, he said.

The first-year premium of life insurers in the first three quarters of the current financial year ended December 31, 2012, declined 12.6 per cent at Rs 69,184 crore compared to Rs 79,153 crore in the year-ago period.

The assets under management in insurance are likely to touch Rs 20-lakh crore this year compared to Rs 18-lakh crore last year, he added.

The regulator would not clear products with high guarantees on net asset value as “they are misleading the customers,” Hari Narayan said. On the recent exit of some foreign joint venture partners from insurance companies, he said this was more due to prevailing economic concerns in their respective countries.

naga.gunturi@thehindu.co.in

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