Kathmandu: The Insurance Board has requested the progress report from the insurance companies that have signed the merger agreement. By the end of Asar, out of 39 insurers, 19 insurers have agreed to the merger. Himalayan General Insurance and Everest Insurance have already commenced their integrated transaction from 1st Sawan.
Rajuraman Paudel, the executive director of the Board has informed that the remaining 17 companies have been asked to submit the progress report of the merger.
The Board has instructed the insurance companies that have given principle consent to do the DDA and complete the necessary procedures sooner rather than later. The Board’s Chairman Surya Prasad Silwal has been saying that the Board is ready to untangle some knots of problems that appear during the merger.
The Board has made a strategy to force the insurance companies that do not agree to the merger even by the end of Chaitra 2079. By the end of Asar, the regulatory authority had encouraged all the companies for merger by providing tax exemption and other facilities. In this process, 19 companies also agreed for the merger.
Union Life Insurance, Prime Life Insurance and Guransh Life Insurance, which were the first to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU), have not yet been able to do much progress. The Board has facilitated the actuarial evaluation of Guransh Life. Now all the three companies are eligible for DDA for merger at once. The DDA is in progress.
Mergers in non-life insurance companies do not seem to be a big problem. But on the life insurer’s side, it is considered somewhat difficult because of the insurance premium rate and the life insurance fund. Even after the merger, the Board has instructed the company to proceed with separate accounts of the policies sold by the company in the past days.
Silwal, chairman, has also expressed his commitment not to issue license for new insurers during his tenure. He has been warning the insurers who have already agreed for merger, to take action if the merger process fails.
