Financial Efficiency of the Public-Sector General Insurance Firms in India

Abstract

Deregulation of the Indian general insurance sector has brought in a lot of opportunities and challenges. In the pre-reform era, the public-sector general insurers dominated the Indian non-life Insurance market with a market share close to 100 per cent. But the situation drastically changed since the enactment of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) Act in 1999. At the end of the FY 2014-15, the collective market share of the four public-sector general insurance firms, carrying on multi-line operations, stood at 50.24 per cent with the number of players having risen to 28 in the country's general insurance sector. One of the reasons for such a decline in the market share of the public-sector general insurers during the post-reform period could be attributed to the rising presence of the private players in the country's general insurance sector. In addition to this, the performances of the country's general insurance firms suffered a setback owing to the contagion effects of the global financial crisis since 2007-08. The present study provides an assessment of the financial efficiencies of the 04 public-sector general insurance firms in India during the post-deregulation study-period from 2008-09 to 2014-15, against the backdrop of the US financial crisis of 2007-08. In this regard, the ratio-based CARAMELS framework has been used in line with the financial soundness indicators (FSIs) for the general insurance firms, as recommended by Das, Davies and Podpiera (2003) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The study has pointed out the United India general insurance company as the best performer among the public-sector general insurance firms in India.