Budget 2018 has provided for the merger of three Non life Insurers Oriental, United and National Insurance and the follow up exercise has already been started and hopefully by next year 2019 the whole exercise would be finalized. The objective of this merger is to reduce administrative cost, increase the risk taking capacity, and reduce internal competition, better utilisation of manpower and offices, and ability to handle large government schemes.
The announcement of health care for 10 crore families will be one of the biggest health care initiatives. If implemented in letter and spirit it will be one of the biggest government backed health care schemes in the world. The government must work out the details carefully so that in the course of implementation of the scheme our PSU insurers do not take the hit. The experience in crop insurance has been very bad and it should not be repeated in health insurance.
Now the time is ripe for the government to establish a Health Insurance Regulator to check the malpractices in the health sector like overpricing of services, fraudulent cases, and bring standardisation in providing health care services.
With ever increasing Banking Frauds and non-payment of Bank loans etc. the only and sole solution would be credit insurance to take care of loan defaults since the system and the Insurance criteria would be there to take care of financial discipline.
With the recurring news of frauds in Banking Industry it is the high time for Insurance Regulators to check the existing system of Investment in Insurance Companies and provide for proper checks and balances so that there is no leakage of revenue and the financial conditions of companies remain sound.
