Oriental Insurance receives 80 intimations from Nepal

Indian insurers and reinsurers are now getting ready to tackle claims emerging from the recent Nepal devastation, according to senior officials.
State-owned non-life insurer Oriental Insurance Company (OIC), which is present in Nepal through its eight offices there, has received 80 intimations from the quake-hit areas in Nepal so far, a senior official said.
It has mostly provided insurance cover to civil structures, boundary walls, offices and housing in the Himalayan country.
"We have underwritten premium to the tune of Rs 50 crore in Nepal during the year gone by. We don't expect any major claims to come to us. Still we are ready to pay whatever the claim amount arises out of the tragedy," OIC Chairman and Managing Director A K Saxena told PTI.

"Since we are unable to send surveyors for a simple reason that Nepal's regulations do not permit us for the same, we do have employed local surveyors for the purpose there. Also, we are shortly sending a core team to visit the earthquake affected sites in Nepal," he said.
"My company doesn't expect heavy claims to come from Nepal as the country was highly under-penetrated when it comes to insurance," he said.

The company may not increase its premium price in that country in near future, he said.
"One incident doesn't make reason enough for us to increase premium price in Nepal," he said.

Though the country's largest non-life insurer New India Assurance doesn't have any direct presence in Nepal, still it felt that its incurred reinsurance losses in the quake-hit country could cross the Rs 35-crore mark.