Mumbai:
In a bid to provide larger support to the $ 5 trillion bound Indian economy, the state owned reinsurer GIC Re has raised its capacity for a single property cover to Rs 3500 crore from Rs 2500 crore in the Indian market.
Effectively, it means the GIC Re can now itself provide cover upto Rs 3,500 crore to any single asset in the Indian market.
“With our growing financial strength, we have decided to raise our capacity for the Indian market to Rs 3,500 crore in 2019-20. Going forward, this will help us providing reinsurance cover to large Indian companies ,’’ said Alice Vaidyan, outgoing CMD of GIC Re.
Vaidyan completed her tenure of 41 months as the CMD of GIC Re on Wednesday. After Vaidya’s retirement, the government has asked two senior officials of GIC Re, M Sashikala,director & general manager and Reena Bhatnagar, general manager, to discharge the function of chairman & managing director from Aug 1, till a regular appointment takes place in the listed company.
Vaidyan also indicated that the GIC Re is planning to increase its exposure in the US market, the largest global general insurance market, and actively thinking to open an office in the country.
“We plan to open an office in the US to be a part a prt of the largest economy of the world. We are also planning to increase our exposure for the US marker through our one year old Lloyd’s syndicate,’’ said Vaidyan adding that recently GIC has converted its Russian branch office into a subsidiary.
According to Vaidyan, the recent move by the GIC Re to increase the reinsurance premium for eight industry categories since February has helped the general insurers to earn 55 per cent more premium in property segment.
This is the first time that the domestic general insurers have managed to increase their premium from the property segments after the detariffing, which led to massive fall in the property premium,was launched in 2007.
Reflecting on her performance in the GIC Re, Vaidyan said that the company has grown its premium base from Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 44,000 crore and managed to list itself raising its profile and has emerged as the 10th largest global reinsurer. Today, GIC Re is also the largest agri-insurer in the world.
“We are now more focussed on bottomline than topline and have decided to reduce our exposure for the crop business. The mandatory 5% obligatory business and having the right to first refusal in the Indian market vis a vis other reinsurers who are present in the country through their branch operations, has helped us serve the Indian market well . We would like to continue this special arrangement till the foreign reinsurers grow in strength and are in a position to provide larger capacities to the Indian customers,’’ concluded Vaidyan.