Ajay Seth, chairman,IRDAI
“It was an introductory meeting and had no specific agenda. Seth wanted to know the state of affair in the Indian reinsurance industry,’’ said one of the CEOs who had attended the meeting
Mumbai: After meeting life and non-life insurers earlier, IRDAI chairman Ajay Seth has met reinsurers, for the first time, in Mumbai on last Friday to review their operations.
CEOs of reinsurance companies including GIC Re, Foreign reinsurance branches(FRBs) and Indian born Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa backed India’s first private sector reinsurer Valueattics Reinsurance had attended the meeting.
PK Arora, member(Actuary) who looks after Reinsurnace department in the IRDAI, was also present in the meeting.
“It was an introductory meeting and had no specific agenda. Seth wanted to know the state of affair in the Indian reinsurance industry,’’ said one of the CEOs who had attended the meeting.
Seth, who has been harping on issues like affordability, bringing down the distribution cost and last mile reach of insurance products, since he joined his new job couple of months back, spoke about the government’s plan for achieving Insurance for by 2047.
Though, the FRBs have been demanding removal of the mandated four per cent obligatory cession of Indian general insurance business to state owned GIC Re for establishing a level playing field, the issues have not been discussed at the meeting.
Of late , the Indian reinsurance market, which is likely to hit Rs 1 lakh crore in FY 26, is undergoing structural changes and attracting many new players.
There are three categories of major players who are doing business in the Indian insurance market. They are GIC Re, FRBs and over 280 cross boarder reinsurers (CBRs) registered with the IRDAI.
The Indian FRBs, which have been set up since 2017 by large global reinsurers like Swiss Re, Munich Re, SCOR , Hannover Re and Lloyd’s , have seen healthy top line as well as bottomline growth.
Since the beginning of this fiscal, the IRDAI had implemented new rules mandating CBRs to keep collaterals for doing Indian business . The government also has actively promoted GIFT-IFSC, the country’s sole International Finance Services Centre located near Ahmedabad, which has seen entries of many global reinsurers for doing dollar denominated Indian business.