Reliance Life, Icici Lombard, Metlife Nods In Next Round

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) chairman N Rangachary today said that Reliance Life Insurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance and Metlife India are among the companies which are expected to obtain licences from the regulator in the next round.

Rangachary said on the sidelines of a seminar on pension funds organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) that Jammu & Kashmir Bank-Metlife have obtained the R2 (second round) clearances, while ICICI Lombard's R2 would be cleared subject to Reserve Bank of India permission. He, however, refused to set a time-frame.

Sahara life and AMP Sanmar have also cleared the first hurdle and obtained R1 clearance from IRDA, while ING Vysya's first round of clearance is being revised, he said.

 

ING Vysya had to submit their R1 application afresh after they roped in Bangalore-based G M R group replacing the R S Damani group.

Reliance, which plans to sell its life insurance product online, is yet to come up with their final plan, Rangachary said. Reliance General Insurance has already obtained a licence in the first batch of registration certificates issued last year.

ICICI, which had tied with UK-based Prudential for life insurance, has already started operations. The general tie-up with Lombard, however has been struck for a while since RBI has not approved the application saying that ICICI would first need to undertake some restructuring.

Dabur CGU Life Insurance is also in the queue for IRDA approval. Dabur, which had applied with us-based AllState, had to reapply as its foreign partner pulled out. CGU, on the other hand, broke away with the Hindustan Times group.