K Rajaraman,Chairman, International Financial Services Centres Authority
To be addressed by K Rajaraman, chairman, IFSCA, PK Arora, member, Actuary and Reinsurance, IRDAI, Tapan Ray, MD&CEO, GIFT City and host of Indian and international reinsurance experts, the day-long summit, participated by over 300 re/insurers, intends to showcase the IFSC GIFT City to global reinsurers and nudge them, who are already dealing with Indian market as Cross Border Reinsurers (CBRs), to set up their operations at IFSC GIFT City
Mumbai: Major global reinsurers are thronging the commercial capital of the country, Mumbai, on Monday to brainstorm their India strategies at `2nd Edition of IFSCA-IRDAI GIFT IFSC Global Reinsurance Summit’.
The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) is a unified authority for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in India.
At present, the International Financial Services centre (IFSC ), located in the GIFT City near Ahmedabad, is the maiden IFSC in India. Prior to the establishment of IFSCA, the domestic financial regulators, namely, RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and IRDAI regulated the business in IFSC.
To be addressed by K Rajaraman, IFSCA chairman, PK Arora, member, Actuary and Reinsurance, IRDAI, Tapan Ray, MD & CEO, GIFT City and host of Indian and international re/insurance experts, the summit, intends to showcase the IFSC GIFT City to global re/insurers and nudge them, who are already dealing with Indian market as Cross Border Reinsurers (CBRs), to set up their operations at IFSC.
Over 300 re/insurers are attending the Monday event.
The IFSC GIFT City offers favorable regulatory environment, tax benefits, modern infrastructure, preferred access to the Indian insurance market, and has the presence of established international players already operating within the zone.
Currently, there are around 300 CBRs, who are registered with the Indian insurance regulator IRDAI and transact almost 30 per cent of the country’s Rs1trillion reinsurance business.
“There is a great momentum seen in the development of the IFSC since the setting up of the IFSCA wherein all efforts are congregated towards onshoring the off-shore,’’ said Rajaraman.
Besides, CBRs, which are required to provide collaterals to do business in India, under the new IRDAI’s Cross Boarder Reinsurance(CBR) Regulations to be implemented from Apr 1, can also set up shop in the IFSC GIFT City to do same Indian business without any hassles and availing hosts of other financial facilities.
IFSCA’s light touch and principle-based regulations have been aligned to global standards to provide the entities with flexibility to offer products in various classes of business including re/insurance and be at par with international peer jurisdictions, added Rajaraman.
Registered IIO can transact direct insurance and reinsurance business within the GIFT City, from other special economic zones (SEZs) and outside India and can conduct insurance and reinsurance business only in foreign currency.
State owned GIC Re, with over 60 per cent market share, is the leader in the domestic reinsurance industry and compete with almost a dozen of large global reinsurers which have set up foreign reinsurance branches(FRBs) in the country.
IFSCA, which is aiming to make GIFT IFSC a global re/insurance Hub with its principle based approach for product designing, pricing and filling, has currently 16 IFSC Insurance Offices (IIOs) and 25 IFSC Insurance Intermediary Offices (IIIOs), taking the total count of registered insurance entities to 41. All the 16 IIOs are also well-diversified between life, non-life, health and re-insurers, said Rajaraman.
Currently, among global reinsurers, GIC RE, Allianz Partners and Berkley Asia, Axa have already set up their reinsurance operations in the GIFT IFSC while Doha Insurance Group has recently announced its decision to set up reinsurance business in the centre.
The Global Reinsurance Summit is likely see more CBRs announcing their IFSC GIFT city ventures, said IFSCA sources.