The power packed event will be addressed by Vivek Joshi, secretary, Department of Financial Services, Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI, K. Rajaraman, chairperson, IFSCA, Hasmukh Adhia, chairman, GIFT City, Siddhartha Mohanty, chairman, Life Insurance Corporation
New Delhi/ Hyderabad/GIFT City:
For the first time, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be addressing a global reinsurance meet “GIFT IFSC (Re)insurance Summit” in Mumbai on Thursday.
The one-day joint summit has been organised by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India IRDAI and Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) to woo global reinsurers to set up operations in India particularly in GIFT City and develop it as a global reinsurance hub to compete with other reinsurance hubs in Asian continent like Dubai, Singapore Hong Kong and Shanghai.
The power packed event will be addressed by a galaxy of high ranking government officials including Vivek Joshi, secretary, Department of Financial Services, Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI, K. Rajaraman, chairperson, IFSCA, Hasmukh Adhia, chairman, GIFT City.
Siddhartha Mohanty, chairman, Life Insurance Corporation(LIC), Hitesh Kotak,CEO, India, Munich Re, Shankar Garigiparthy, CEO & Country Manager, Lloyd’s India,. Girija Subramanian,CMD, Agriculture Insurance Company, Tapan Singhel, Vibha Padalkar, MD& CEO , HDFC Life, Naveen Tahilyani, CMD, TATA AIA, will also be participating as panelists in various sessions on different topics.
Satyendra Shrivastava, senior partner, Consortia Legal and Narendra Ganpule, partner, KPMG will also make presentations about the regulatory framework and the latest development of niche areas in insurance sector of IFSC respectively.
Though, all the big names of global reinsurance industry including the largest international reinsurer like Munich Re, Swiss Re, Hannover Re, SCOR, Lloyd’s of London, Gen Re US life reinsurance major RGA, have set up their branches( Foreign Reinsurance Branches) in India since 2017, the government is not happy about the fact that despite great deal of incentives and available opportunities in terms of fast growing Indian insurance industry, not many global reinsurers are setting up offices either inside Gift City or in the country.
The government is keen that a lot of cross boarder reinsurers (CBRs), who are registered with the IRDAI to do business with Indian insurance industry, should set up offices in the Gift city. Currently, there are over 300 CBRs who have IRDAI registration to deal with the Indian market.
The introduction of insurance in IFSC has facilitated in taking a step towards achieving the objective of developing IFSC as a hub for global (re)insurance. The insurers have a great business opportunity to render services within the IFSC, all SEZs in India or any other jurisdiction outside India in any freely convertible foreign currency.
IFSCA is a unified authority for development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in India.
India has emerged as one of the fastest growing insurance markets in the world in 2022. Swiss Re, the second largest global reinsurer, has forecast that it will be the sixth largest by 2032 ahead of Germany, Canada and South Korea.
With $131 billion of total premium in 2022, currently, India is the 10th largest market in the world, where US, China and UK are the top three in the global chart.
The Indian non-life business, with over 30 players has generated a total premium of USD 32 billion.
In line with the growth of the insurance market, Indian reinsurance market has witnessed a seamless expansion in all these years.
The size of the Indian reinsurance market is estimated to be approximately Rs 70,000 (USD 8.9 billion) in terms of premium with three main players- GIC Re, Foreign Reinsurance Branches and Cross Boarder Reinsurers(CBRs)
State owned GIC Re leading the show with around 70 per cent of the market share followed by FRBs and CBRs…
Growing at a faster clip, these foreign reinsurers have mobilised a total premium of over Rs 20,000crore (USD 2.5 billion) FY 2022-23 over around Rs 18,000 crore(USD 2.2 billion) recorded in 2021-22.
Over another 300 CBRs have generated around another Rs13,000 crore (USD1.8 billion) of premium.
The vision with which the IFSC is set up is of “Onshoring the offshore international financial services”, which is in line with the Atma Nirbhar vision of Government of India.
The IFSC has been designed as a special international financial jurisdiction, which is treated as a “person resident outside India” under Foreign Exchange Management Regulations.
Capital control regulations as applicable in domestic India does not apply in the IFSC.