Collaborate efforts needed to develop banking and insurance

International Insurance Conference concluded

Vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission Dr. Yuba Raj Khatiwada Friday said that in the absence of well developed insurance market, banking industry could not prosper.

Speaking on the final day of the 3^rd South Asian Regulators Meet and International Insurance Conference 2016 as keynote speaker, the former Nepal Rastra Bank governor said, “There should be no significant difference between supervisors in banking, insurance and cooperative sector. There should be collaborative efforts to develop these sectors,” he said.

Dr. Khatiwada delivered his keynote speech on ‘Improving supervisory co-operation to enhancing insurance market development’.

Saying that the weak regulatory system could create shadow financing, he emphasized on the strong regulatory mechanism to strengthen the insurance industry.

He suggested for joint collaboration, technology transfer and experience sharing mechanism among the regulators and insurers in the region in order to develop the insurance business.

Insurance Regulators from the South Asian and East Asian nations, experts, academicians and other stakeholders deliberated on five pertinent issues of the insurance sector viz. risks-based capital and solvency margin, reinsurance practice, using insurance fund in infrastructure development, health insurance, and capacity building of insurance professional, on the second day.

Experts stated that the companies were not interested to invest in human resource development.

National Banking Institute’s chief executive officer, Sanjeev Subba said that most of the department heads were more concerned to meeting business targets rather than capacity building of the human resource.

“Regulators and insurance industry should deliberate on establishing a training academy and NBI is ready to help in such initiatives,” he said.

Presenting her paper on health insurance, Indian expert Pompy Shridhar said that health insurance had a big untapped market potential but the companies and the governments should work together to address the challenges like growing population, reach and accessibility to the insurance, poor infrastructure and illiteracy.

Vivek Jha, CEO of Nepal Life Insurance Company, said that the Nepalese insurance industry was vulnerable to underwriting, market and operation risks.

On the second day of the conference, Pompy Sridhar, Jagath Alwis, director of Ceylinco General Insurance Limited, UK, Bengt Johnsen, CEO of UIB Asia Reinsurance Broker, Singapore, and Sushobhan Sarkar, director of National Insurance Academy, India presented their papers.

Delivering his concluding remarks, chairman of the Beema Samiti, Prof. Dr. Fatta Bahadur KC, said the conference emphasized on higher insurance penetration with common programme amongst the regional partners for inclusive insurance policy and programmes.

“The deliberations were very much fruitful and will definitely help in devising new insurance products, programmes and policies,” he said.

The conference was inaugurated by the Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Poudel on Thursday. Inaugurating conference, Minister Poudel stressed on organizing public awareness campaign for the expansion of insurance service to the access of common people.

He said that it was high time to expand influence of insurance sector and urged the concerned authorities and stakeholders to come with innovative ideas and programmes.

On the occasion, chief of the regulatory authorities of insurance sector of other South Asian countries also spoke on the expansion of insurance business and its contemporary challenges.

Deliberations were also held on the issues like role of regulatory frameworks to increase insurance outreach, disaster management, inclusive insurance market and agricultural insurance.

Various experts from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Philippines and Bangladesh, and representatives from the Asian Development Bank, German Cooperation Agency and various reinsurance companies discussed issues pertinent to the Nepalese and the South Asian insurance market.

The conference was organized by the Beema Samiti in collaboration with the ADB and German Cooperation.