We are ready for a detariff regime

Chennai: The domestic non-life insurance companies are gearing themselves for a truly liberalised regime. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has published a road map for detariffing, Roadmap Towards Freeing of Pricing.But some companies have expressed their unhappiness at the pace of detariffing. "The roadmap is good and brings out IRDA's expectations. Our company would have preferred a much faster detariffing than is given in the roadmap," says Shrirang V Samant, CEO, HDFC Chubb General Insurance Company Limited. Excerpts from an interview:

Is your company geared to meet the deadlines mentioned in the roadmap to separate underwriting from business development?
Our company has appropriate underwriting structure in place and is well equipped to meet the time lines mentioned in the roadmap. We have from the beginning separated underwriting from business development functions.

Are you ready with your own premium rates?
We are in the process of developing our own premium rates for those products that will get detariffed.

There is a view that detariffing all non-motor businesses will not succeed with the motor business itself being under tariffs. What are the issues here?
Detariffing is essentially an acknowledgement of business realities and an attempt to differentiate the risk exposure. Keeping one sector of insurance which comprises over 40 per cent of the market under tariff fundamentally goes against the concept of detariffing.