improvements in settlement of claims related to the devastating earthquake of April 25, but their performance still cannot be considered satisfactory.A total of 16 operational non-life insurers settled 485 — or 3.6 per cent — of 13,414 claims as of Wednesday, show the latest data of the Insurance Board (IB), the insurance sector regulator. Till May 28, these companies had settled only around 1.5 per cent of the claims.The claims filed so far are worth Rs 12.21 billion, of which a mere Rs 134.08 million has been released as compensation.
As of Wednesday, the highest number of claims was received by Sagarmatha Insurance (2,057), followed by Siddhartha Insurance (1,336) and Nepal Insurance (1,335).If Sagarmatha Insurance were to settle all the claims, it needs to fork out Rs 1.30 billion. However, it has so far settled less than one per cent of the claims and has released a payment of mere Rs 3.49 million.Siddhartha Insurance, on the other hand, has settled only 2.02 per cent of claims worth Rs 5.72 million, while Nepal Insurance has settled 2.77 per cent of claims worth Rs 3.12 million.
The best performer in the industry, so far, is Shikhar Insurance, which has settled 15.18 per cent of claims worth Rs 89.79 million.Non-life insurers, as in the previous week, pointed a finger at insurance surveyors — who assess the damage and determine liability — for delay in claim settlement.“Many surveyors have not submitted reports on damage assessment. And surprisingly, it is senior surveyors who have failed to submit these reports,” said Dip Prakash Panday, CEO of Shikhar Insurance, adding, “We can’t release payments until we receive the reports.”Although the number of reports submitted by surveyors increased by almost 72 per cent in the past one week, thousands more are yet to be submitted.
Till yesterday, surveyors submitted 819 reports, as against 477 on May 28.One of the reasons for delay in report submission, according to surveyors, is shortage of human resources, as there are only around 400 licensed surveyors in the country.Earlier, IB officials had estimated total quake-related losses of non-life insurers to stand at around Rs 20 billion.Of this amount, losses of Rs five billion to Rs six billion may have to be borne by companies themselves and the rest by reinsurance companies located abroad, IB officials said.Insurance companies here retain only a small portion of risk with them and transfer most of the risk to reinsurers located in India, Malaysia and countries in Africa, among others.
source: the himalayan times, 5 june 2015
LINK
Comments
Post a Comment