Kathmandu: The number of aspirants for license to establish new life, non-life and micro insurance company has piled up at the office of the Insurance Board(IB).
According to the IB, various groups have registered applications for the establishment of life, non-life insurance and micro insurance companies. It has been shared that more than 14 applications for life and non-life insurer and 5 for micro insurer’s license has been registered at the IB’s office.
Except the new aspirants, most of the applications have been registered by the promoters of existing life and non-life insurance company. If a group has non-life insurance company, it has applied for life insurance or micro insurance company’s license. And if a group is already involved in the life insurance business, then it has shown interest either for non-life or micro insurance company’s license.
Billionaire Binod Chaudhary’s CG group, has also proposed for the license of a life insurance company. CG has already investment in United Insurance Company.
Some group of investors have already collected written commitment for the capital investment in the proposed new insurance companies. The charm among the group of investors have been observed not for running the core business, rather making money from the secondary market manipulation.
According to the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s proposed strategy for inclusive and digital insurance, the IB needs to segregate the micro-insurance business from the traditional structure of the existing life or non-life insurance companies to ensure better accessibility through specialized service offering. Further, the World Bank Group has also emphasized on special arrangements for micro-insurance coverage, Even a separate regulatory authority for the regulation of the micro-insurance companies has been proposed under the broad concept of the Risk Based Capital(RBC). World Bank Group is financially and technically supporting the IB for the execution of RBC among insurance companies in Nepal.
The IB has yet to take decision regarding the new numbers of life, non-life and micro-insurance companies. Its higher level authority is awaiting for green signal from the Ministry of Finance to distribute the license to new companies.
Sources confirm that license for few new companies will be issued by the IB. It has been witnessed that such move is mostly taken prior to major election. It has been speculated that the coalition government is in preparation for the declaration of election for house of representatives soon.
