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Tuesday, February 28, 2012 6:04 PM]
Max New York Life Insurance has launched a limited premium payment term plan ‘Premium Return Term Plan’ with 100% return of premium paid on survival of the policyholder.
Keeping Indian market in mind, where people are increasingly becoming aware of the true value of life insurance and willing to secure their financial future and also don’t wish to relinquish premiums paid in case of survivals, the company has launched a comprehensive protection plans, which covers not only the risk of life but also refunds total premium paid. It’s also the first plan to have an in-built accidental death benefit rider in an affordable rate.
Speaking on the launch, Rajesh Sud, CEO & MD, Max New York Life Insurance said, 'Life Insurance is the foundation of a sound financial plan and at Max New York Life Insurance we keep the consumer needs at the forefront when designing our products.'
As per data published by State Crime Records Bureaux (SCRBx), the incidence of accidental deaths has increased to 50% in the year 2010 as compared to year 2000.This plan of Max New York Life Insurance has been designed keeping consumers requirements in mind.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:18 AM]
Following a letter from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority to the Life Insurance Council, the insurers have decided to meet the council to bring clarity on products.In the letter, the regulator clearly mentioned that the complex products are not aligned with the best practices and often lack clarity. IRDA has asked the Life Insurance Council, a statutory body of life insurers to smoothen the structure of insurance products.
Important areas of concern mentioned in the letter are:-
(a) Low Insurance Cover: However, in Ulips, the minimum sum assured or death benefit that insurer can offer is defined but in case of traditional policies, the minimum sum assured is not defined.
(b) Ulips: In case of Ulips, the regulator has pointed out the proliferation of funds as key concern. Several funds offer to customers, vary minutely.
Another concern is the capital guarantee products that guarantee the highest NAV. These Ulips promise maturity benefit or fund value at the highest NAV (Net Asset Value) during the policy term and by some miracle to fetch the highest return but it’s not true.
(c) Illustration Benefits: The regulator allows the agents to show illustration of different insurance policies on an assumed rate of growth of 6% and 10%. In all Ulips, the benefit illustration must be calculated at a percentage which is less than the median return of the fund value calculated for all funds in force in the last two years. For traditional products this median should be calculated on the basis of the returns of the traditional plans which have matured and for companies who do not have any plans that have matured, the median return of the paid up value of the last two years can be calculated.
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Friday, February 24, 2012 2:41 PM]
MUMBAI: Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has shown deep concerns over the maximum limit of sum assured on life insurance policies. IRDA wants the insurance company to set a maximum limit of sum assured so that they take maximum risk on themselves rather to heavily depend on the reinsurers to honour insurance claims.
'Most products filed for clearance assign ‘no limit’ to the maximum sum assured, which leads to fronting that means dependency on the reinsurer. Insurers that have reinsured very little risk may find it difficult to honour claims, which will damage the trust built on the industry,' said IRDA in a letter to the insurers.
'The authority also insisted that the insurers must make a clear distinction between group and individual policies. And group policies can only be sold by licensed intermediaries and not through bancassurance channels. Banks, acting as corporate agents, mostly offer policies to bank customers. It results in many complaints of premiums being deducted without the specific consent of the policyholder,' a senior executive of a large insurance company said.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:51 PM]
New Delhi: Motor and health insurance prices likely to go up as the government has suggested the insurers to raise premiums to cover their deficits.
The Ministry of Finance advised the national reinsurer General Insurance Corporation, not to provide reinsurance cover to individual insurers on policies in the loss making segment. According to the letter issued by the Finance Ministry earlier this month, 'GIC is also advised not to give reinsurance for such policies which are loss making as they lead to claims on GIC and for such business, let the insurers take risk or raise premiums.'
The ministry has also directed GIC to reduce commission by 50%, paid to insurers for reinsurance business to 5%.
'The GIC may pay 5% commission on obligatory cession and no such restriction is imposed on cession beyond 10% obligatory cession,' the letter said.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:47 PM]
Port of Spain: India’s insurance giant, New India Assurance, all set to open it’s new multi-million-dollar head office in Trinidad and Tobago by this year, an official said.
'Recently, the company has drawn up a new strategic plan 2012 which visualizes to reach premium around $33 million and to double the profit by 2015,' chief executive of the company (Trinidad and Tobago), Aswatha Narayana said.
'The company’s 70% of business comes from Trinidad and Tobago itself and the rest from the other islands. As of 31st December’2010, New India Assurance’s premium exceeded 100 million Trinidad and Tobago dollars and so is the total equity and they are over 106 million Trinidad and Tobago dollars,' he added.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012 6:50 PM]
With a view to improve transparency in reinsurance contracts, the supreme authority IRDA today said that it is planning to introduce an electronic re-insurance platform for insurers.
"We are going to come out with re-insurance platform for both local and foreign re-insurers," Insurance Regulatory Development Authority chairman J Hari Narayan told reporters here on the sidelines of a global meet on actuaries in Mumbai.
The IRDA had taken up an ambitious programme of designing an exchange or an inter-faceted, interlinked, electronic platform on which reinsurance broking transactions can be executed.
"The entire operation on the reinsurance side will be done through this particular platform once it is in place," Narayan said.
He said that there is a need to widen and deepen the insurance distribution system."Out of the 90,000-odd bank branches, only 13,000 branches offer insurance products today. 43 general and private insurance companies have entered into partnership with various banks for distributing their products.” He said.
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Tuesday, February 7, 2012 12:08 PM]
Public sector insurer Life Insurance Corporation is to buy 5% stake in Dena Bank Ltd. in order to help the bank prop up its capital base and boost its shares.
The Bank's board has approved the allocation of shares to LIC, amounting to approximately 1.5 billion rupees.
Many state run banks are in the need of capital desperately to strengthen their balance sheets.Dena Bank’s Chairwoman Nupur Mitra said, "We don't have plans to raise anymore funds. We will take a view of any further raising depending upon the market."
Earlier, Dena Bank has asked the government for 5 billion rupees in the next three-four years to meet its basic needs.
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Monday, February 6, 2012 12:07 PM]
India’s leading private insuring company - SBI Life Insurance has come out with its multi-lingual website in 9 major Indian languages to promote communication with clients in the language of their choice.
The languages are Hindi, Punjabi Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali.
In a press release, Mr. M. N. Rao, SBI Life MD and CEO said, “In line with our customer centric business philosophy, the multi-lingual website has been created to facilitate communication with customers in the language, they are most comfortable with. The initiative is aimed at further simplifying customers’ understanding about our products and services so as to enable them to make well-informed decisions before investing their hard-earned money."
With the number of Indians, using the internet, crossing 100 million mark, SBI Life’s initiative acquires a big importance.
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Sunday, February 5, 2012 5:59 PM]
Complying with instructions from the Delhi High Court on providing health insurance to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA), the IRDA has issued the draft norms to insure PLHA.In the draft, IRDA has given directions to all life and general insurers to develop a product insuring the health of individuals suffering from HIV and under their health insurance policies.
IRDA said that the risk could be covered through a rider under a critical illness policy that would provide a lump-sum just in case the insured contracts the disease.
Insurers will have to particularly take into consideration individuals who are not showing the symptoms but are in first and second stage of HIV infection. The policy should furnish clear guidelines.
IRDA has asked the Insurers to file with the regulator within next months and seek its approval.
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Saturday, February 4, 2012 5:58 PM]
Changes in the perspective about insurance products, increasing awareness and rising use of the internet is compelling insuring companies to look at on-line channels for insurance distribution. Many leading insurers, including market leader LIC, are considering online distribution to increase sales.
Thomas Mathew, MD, LIC of India said, "on-line may not be very profitable right now, but it will be definitely be unprofitable not to be online. One option that insurers could look at is selling pre-approved through business correspondents of banks with whom they have a tie-up. This is of course subject to regulatory approval.” As per Mathew, insuring companies will need to use technology to build a cheap distribution model that is practically reachable as sales pick up.
In year2010, the IRDA tightened norms, which compelled companies to decrease the commission amount to insurance agents. IRDA also made it compulsory for agents to reach a minimum level of productiveness and persistence in business.
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Friday, February 3, 2012 6:14 PM]
On Thursday, insurance watchdog IRDA started a forum to help promotes health insurance. The forum would in the end become a self-regulatory organization to promote the health insurance sector.
The panel would have as members, Chief executive officers of health and health insurance companies, TPAs, representatives of health service providers and officials from labour and health ministries.
The forum would play the role of consultative agency for insurers and other concerned parties and would also help IRDA in gathering data for increasing the efficiency of health insurance business in India.
Forum members would have an office period of two years and meet at least twice a year.
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Thursday, February 2, 2012 11:10 AM]
Private life insurance company Aegon Religare has announced the launch of its new online protection plan 'iTerm'. The company is expecting to sell minimum 15-20 percent of its policies through online delivery channel.
CMO Yateesh Srivastava said, "We ventured into the online distribution segment in 2009 with launch of the Aegon Religare iTerm plan. Now we have a new and improved version of the plan. Currently around 10% of our business, with regard to total plans sold, comes from the online segment. With the new and improved version we expect the numbers to go up to 15-20% within 18-24 months."
Anyone between age group of 18 years to 65 years can purchase iTerm and the maximum maturity is 75 years. The minimum sum assured is Rs. 10 lakh and the policy term is between 5 to 57 years.
The minimum premium is Rs. 1675 for regular policy and Rs. 7075 for single policy and could be paid in single or annual instalments.
The original iTerm was launched in year 2009 has sold over 19,000 policies amounting to Rs. 9410 crore in total sum assured.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012 11:07 AM]
Life insurance Company, IDBI Federal, has launched Termsurance Grameen Suraksha in association with IDBI Bank. The product which is first-of-its-kind insurance plan for rural customers of IDBI Bank was launched in Surli village in the district of Satara, Maharashtra.
Speaking on the occassion, R. K. Bansal, ED, IDBI Bank said, “Last year, we initiated our drive to extend our services to the unbanked regions. Our Ogalewadi Branch is one of the oldest in this region, making Surli an important village for us to reach out to. With IDBI Federal rural plan, we can offer the villagers a comprehensive set of financial solutions customised for them.”
Termsurance Grameen Suraksha is a low-cost, simple insurance plan that will help provide financial security to the clients of IDBI Bank at Surli and other nearby villages.
