Life insurance sector likely to grow 10% this fiscal, says IRDA chief

The life insurance industry is likely to register around 10 per cent growth in the current fiscal, according to T. S. Vijayan, Chairman, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA).

Speaking to newspersons after inaugurating the new premises of the Insurance Information Bureau (IIB) here on Monday, Vijayan said the general insurance segment was also expected to grow by 16-17 per cent this year.

“The overall business might touch Rs 4-lakh crore, which is fairly good,” he said. It may be noted that the life insurance segment logged growth in the quarter ended September 30, 2013 for the first time since 2010.

PRODUCTS About 500 life insurance products have been approved so far in line with the new product designing norms, he said. All the insurers have to phase out the old products before December 31 and sell products according to the new norms. Earlier, the IRDA chief said insurers should justify the pricing or premium of their products while seeking approvals on the basis of sound data. Lack of justification would lead to a delay in approvals and the regulator would question the basis of price/premium rates, he said.

The data, being prepared by IIB, would be significant in this context, he added.

R. Raghavan, Chief Executive Officer, IIB, said the process of collecting data on life insurance was on and his institute would be able to provide business analytics support for the industry.

M. Ramprasad, Member (Non-Life), IRDA, said general insurance data/services being provided by IIB would be very useful for the companies. Data related to consumers should be made available on real-time basis, he added.

T. Sriram, Executive Director, IRDA, said IIB would be able to address data security issues as it is an arm of IRDA, which has a fool-proof data security system in place.

naga.gunturi@thehindu.co.in