Budget 2018: FM Arun Jaitley needs to focus on job creation, insurance

Budget 2018 expectations by Roopam Asthana, CEO & whole-time director at Liberty Videocon General Insurance

Days before Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents Budget 2018, here are the Budget 2018 expectations of Roopam Asthana, chief executive and whole-time director at Liberty Videocon General Insurance, on three key issues important for the economy:

Generate Employment

While the level of unemployment remains high, insurance companies are starved of adequately trained insurance professionals to manage their business especially in smaller towns. Unfortunately, there are not enough institutions like we have ITIs for technical training for training professionals on insurance business. This situation will only get more acute with time unless a solution is worked on right now. I would recommend that expenditure of insurance companies on providing insurance related vocational training leading to employment be given a tax break in the form of deduction from tax payable. This will encourage more insurance companies to set up their own vocational training setups leading to greater employment and better managed growth of insurance business in India.

Health Insurance

Penetration of health insurance is woefully low in India. We have a strange phenomenon in India where health insurance penetration in relative terms is higher in BPL segment (due to Government sponsored schemes), middle class Government employees and in the affluent segment (due to higher awareness and ability to afford) as compared to the middle-lower middle income segments especially in the self-employed professional category in both large metros as well as small town India. While this segment may not be paying income tax , at the same time a large number of such self-employed professionals are today covered in the ambit of GST. Thus, while deductions in Income Tax may not be attractive to this segment, a set-off of GST payable could make a difference to them in terms of their cash flows and should be considered to encourage purchase of health insurance for themselves, their families as well as for their employees – who probably are the most vulnerable and need it the most.

Home Insurance

For a large number of Indians, the biggest investment is in buying or building a home. With easier availability of mortgages and government thrust on affordable homes, Indians are not just investing their savings but also their future savings in buying or building homes. At the same time, exposure to natural calamities is only increasing with earthquakes, landslides, floods and inundation. Frequency of buildings collapsing also seems to have increased if one goes by news reports. A natural calamity in a large urban agglomeration could lead to severe losses to a very large number of home owners as less than 1% of homes in India are insured today. These losses could cause a large social upheaval and stress on Government resources as well as NPAs for mortgage lenders. There is, therefore, a crying need to increase the penetration of home insurance in India. Besides the lack of awareness, there seems to be a cultural opposition to insure homes as we believe that “it will never happen to us”. This thinking needs to be changed and home owners need to be forced to get home insurance till it becomes an automatic part of buying/building homes in India. I would, therefore, recommend that buying home insurance be made a pre-requisite to registration of homes just like buying motor third party insurance is mandatory for registration of automobiles in India. This can start with new homes and then extended to others at the time of registration of lease agreements, changes in plans, extensions etc. Buying home insurance is a good habit and this has to be fostered forcibly to save our society from future catastrophic losses.

The author is CEO & whole-time director at Liberty Videocon General Insurance