The domestic insurance industry is concerned about the slowing speed of product clearance in the life insurance segment. Market players believe that around 80-100 products are pending with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) since past few months for their approval.
While market players feel that, products should get fast approval so that it can reach more and more investors, insurance regulator believes that, delay in clearing proposal might be only due to the complexity of the products filed by the insurers.
“I don’t know the exact number of proposal pending at Irdai. But we might not have cleared some due to its complexity. If there are simple products we clear it quickly,”
Irdai chairman T S Vijayan said on the sidelines of 17th annual Insurance Conference organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Industry players believe that, the delay is largely due to the change in the Insurance Amendments Act, which has triggered a lot of the procedure requirement as several departments of the regulator were busy bringing out those regulations.
A CEO of a top insurance company said, “Last year, a number of products got approved quickly. In recent times, they have been busy with regulations triggered by the amendment of Insurance Act and hence the product approvals are not as quick as before.”
