I am happy to note that the General Insurance Council is coming out with the 7th edition of the Non-Life Insurance Industry Year Book for the financial year 2018-19. In keeping with the times, the yearbook is being made available online for easy browsing, navigation and search. The rich contents of the Year Book include the industry’s growth and performance over the decade under various parameters enabling readers to have a glimpse of the state of the industry. Though the business growth of non-life insurance industry is lower in the year than that of the previous year, yet it has remained well above the overall Indian economic growth rate and the growth rates of manufacturing and service sectors.

The non-life insurance penetration rate in India is low and hence, there is still a large untapped market in India. I am positive that the insurers would adopt the latest technologies and practices to increase insurance penetration and growth. The online issuance of policies and use of Insurtech products for better underwriting insights and faster and accurate claim processing are steps in the right direction.

In addition to the metrics provided each year on the growth in various lines of business, this Year Book also has attempted to classify the business into different segments. The newly introduced detailed presentation of growing sectors such as crop and Motor TP insurances across the various vehicle classes is a welcome addition. I congratulate the GI Council for their constant and consistent efforts in presenting more detailed information enabling segment- wise data analysis.

The various charts, graphs and tables in the Year Book can be good reference material for those interested in research and analysis of the performance of the non-life insurance sector as well as to new players who are looking at profiling the Indian Insurance industry for entry into the market, or for investment.

I appreciate the role of the GI Council in furthering the cause of the industry and providing a platform for the smooth inter-operation between companies and other agencies. It is commendable that GI Council has taken up shared-data initiatives such as ETASS for reconciling co-insurance balances and settlements among the companies and integration of insurance and Vahan databases to identify uninsured vehicles is implemented. It has also taken up projects that support the end customer including standardizing the Insured Declared Value (IDV) for cars and two wheelers, office locator module to help locate the insurance companies and links to important information on the GI Council website.

I understand that the GI Council plans to enhance its capabilities to make available business analytics and information in their website with more frequent updates. This would benefit stakeholders and the public. IRDAI would continue to support GI Council in its endeavour towards insurance awareness and education leading to increased insurance penetration, in providing affordable insurance products to citizens of our country and towards overall improved customer service.

I wish the GI Council all success.

Hyderabad
23rd December 2019


Dr.Subhash C. Khuntia
    Chairman, IRDAI