Irda to suggest changes in Insurance Bill

Wants all the latest changes that had happened in the insurance sector in terms of technology usage among other things

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) chairman T S Vijayan on Friday said they would be making suggestions to the Select Committee of the Parliament on modernising the Insurance Bill currently under its review as many changes took place in the Indian insurance sector after it was drafted almost eight years ago.

The insurance regulator wants the Select Committee to incorporate all the latest changes that had happened in the insurance sector in terms of technology usage among other things.

"This bill was envisaged in 2006 and lot of changes have happened in the environment, when we are bringing 2014 bill IRDA's opinion is that it is better that latest changes in technology are also coming in the bill so that it looks like the most-modern bill," he said.He addressed a seminar on "Digitisation and Enhanced FDI in Insurance-The Road Ahead," organised by the Assocham.

Emergence of health insurance as a prominent segment of the non-life sector, emergence of e-commerce, repositories and web aggregators that had come up after the bill was first drafted will have to be taken into account in when the bill is finalised, he said.

On the issue of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the insurance sector, the regulator said, "The industry needs huge amount of capital, if foreign capital is increased it will ensure easier flow of capital than all put by Indian companies, I welcome any type of capital infusion into the companies."

On digitisation of life insurance policies he said that all the companies were asked to digitise minimum 5,000 life insurance policies to see if there are any procedural problems. " The initial pilot will be over by end of September and once it is over we'll review the whole thing," he added.