Kathmandu: The Insurance Board is mulling to issue licenses for micro insurance companies.
Based on the announcement of the government’s budget for upcoming fiscal year 2079/80, the Board is making necessary preparations to issue license for a separate company into operation.
The existing Insurance Act 2049 has no provision of a separate Micro Insurance Company. The provision of Micro Insurance Company has been made in the proposed bill of Insurance Act which has been under review and discussion in the House of Representatives(HoR).
The Board needs to await till the proposed Bill is passed by the both house of HoR. It has been expected that the ongoing session of the HoR will pass the proposed bill by mid July.
At present, both life and non life insurance companies are selling micro insurance products. But the Government and the Board itself are not satisfied with the existing percentage of access to micro insurance.
Micro-insurance has been introduced with the idea of providing insurance access to the deprived and marginalized communities.
The Government and the Board, both are much hopefull that the establishment of some specialized insurers for micro insurance will help expand the reach to insurance for poor and marginalized communities.
But the insurers opine that, without policy level support and large bucket to support the micro insurance, expected results can not be obtained. An insurer added that, with Government’s existing plan and policies, it will just add numbers of insurers but won’t fulfill the Government’s target.
