There must be a separate Regulator for Healthcare Segment: IRDAI

The Member (Non-Life) of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) believes that either there must be a separate regulator for the healthcare segment or that the IRDAI must be allowed to regulate hospitals.

 

"We wish that there is a regulator or we are allowed to regulate hospitals," said Smt T L Alamelu, while addressing the 23rd CII Insurance and Pensions Summit.The insurance regulator also suggested that they are attentive towards the increasing price of Insurance premiums."Have an eye on how insurers increase their premiums," she added.

Alamelu also mentioned that "InsurTechs and FinTechs are both ways for the industry to move forward" and that the "regulator has allowed the industry to do digital policies and we have in the regulatory sandbox encouraged this marriage between the InsurTech and insurers."

Chairman, PFRDA, SupratimBandyopadhyay,suggested that the country is not future ready in terms of penetration of pension schemes. The chief of the pension regulation in India advised that financial literacy and especially pension literacy could be helpful in making India ready for the future.

"We are still not future ready, and I believe lot of financial literacy and pension literacy has to go into it," he suggested, adding that  "IRDAI and PFRDA can come together and we can create a forum through which, if CII agrees, we can work together – all three of us to create awareness in a big way."

According to Randip Singh Jagpal, Chief General Manager, IRDAI, the spread of insurance penetration has made its way to the village level through the CSEs or other post offices and people are more aware as to how to meet their security needs, they look upon insurance in meeting their protection needs.

Jagpal also mentioned that the "insurance products are being structured in a very simplified manner so there is a lot of focus on having simple products which are easy to identify and easy to explain to the customer."

“The initiatives like the Jeevan Jyoti, Suraksha BimaYojana, Atal Pension Yojana and the Ayushman Bharat scheme have been kind of stand-out initiatives that aim to provide a social security net to insurance and pension schemes. These initiatives have certainly helped addressing the socio-economic needs of the poor, the underserved, the underprivileged by providing financial security of some sort," said Saurabh Mishra, Joint Secretary, Department of Financial Services, who highlighted the importance of Government of India schemes in bridging the socio-economic divide.

Krishnan Ramachandra, Co-Chair, CII National Committee on Insurance and Pensions said that "even with increasing penetration, etc. we will need to factor for general and medical inflation and given that medical inflation operates significantly higher than CPI, there will need to be a correction cycle from a pricing standpoint."