New insurance premium is waning, says Sunaina Vasudev at BS. Overall, nwe premiums have fallen 21% with Reliance, Bajaj and ICICI seeing their new premiums cut but more than a third. In quantity, LIC is the biggest player out there with about 36,000 cr. in new premiums, down from 45,000 earlier. But of the rest: [...]

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IRDA has released guidelines for “web aggregators”. (I’ve written about this earlier) These are final guidelines and will be applicable from February 2012. There has been some consternation regarding these guidelines. Medianama believes that these are “disastrous for the industry”. PolicyBazaar.com – which will have to get regulated now – is unhappy and says “the [...]

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Insurers have been losing some steam over the last two years, but how much? Taking new premium over all products, bought by individuals since 2009 shows us how things are: August saw a strange spike last year in individual single premium policies last year so the –61% looks like an anomaly. (And indeed, therehave been [...]

Posted in ChartOfTheDay, Charts, Credit Repair, Insurance Comments Off

IRDA has produced "draft" guidelines on Web Aggregators (HT: Medianama) that will regulate "web aggregators. I now discuss the points in the guidelines (download here): What are "Aggregators"? Aggregators are web sites that g…

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It turns out(*) that the new guidelines for ULIPs in 2010 have claimed another victim: Cover Continuance. The concept, prior to September 2010: if you bought a ULIP and stopped paying premiums after say 5 years, you could choose to continue to have …

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A small story at Yahoo on the choice: Ulips or Mutual Funds. (Posted in entirety) It was the day they’d talked about 9 years ago. The first day of 2011. “I’m on my way.” Ganesh Raghupathi sighed. He had known Arnold would be late. But then…

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(This is an article I wrote recently, so here you go!) The new ULIP regime is here, and insurers must be balking in fear. The changes? Spread commissions over the lock-in period of the scheme, the minimum of which is now five years from the earlier th…

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ICICI Launches an online iProtect plan – for a 35 year old, the premium is just 24,000 for a 30 year, 1 crore term insurance. This is bought entirely online (no agents). This is fairly cheap, but the only problem I have is that this is ICICI insu…

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Devangshu Datta gets it absolutely right: Ulips have been around for several years. The structures are known. Every financial newspaper and business magazine of repute has analysed Ulips and shown in detail why investors should avoid them. In th…

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I write at Yahoo – “Understanding Insurance”, an article featuring a conversation that will, hopefully, elevate understanding levels of the unnecessarily complex industry. "I need some more help," said Sharma. "I’m getting hounde…

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