National Insurance Company Limited (NIC), a Government company, plans to complete its initial public offering (IPO) by this fiscal, K Sanath Kumar, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, has said.
"We might be possibly the fifth insurer to tap the market this fiscal. Hopefully, we should be there before March 2018", Kumar told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a PHDCCI event on 'Health Insurance' here on Thursday.
NIC will soon take an in-principle approval from the insurance regulator IRDAI, post which the merchant bankers would be appointed for the issue, he added.
Kumar said that it was for the Centre to decide on how much of its shareholding it wanted to dilute through the IPO. As on date, the Centre holds the entire shareholding in NIC.
Already state-owned General Insurance Corp and New India Assurance have filed their draft red herring prospectuses with SEBI for their IPOs.
Besides, a slew of private insurance companies including ICICI Lombard General Insurance, HDFC Standard Life Insurance and SBI Life Insurance have announced plans to list on the bourses this fiscal.
The Centre plans to raise at least Rs 11,000 crore from divestments in state-owned Insurance companies this fiscal.