Fixing the minimum premium price: The insurance cartel may just be back

IRDA usherd in true competition by abolishing the Tariff Advisory Committee in 2002

Heads of leading general insurance companies in India are quite busy these days. That’s understandable as business is booming (the non-life segment is growing at a fast clip of nearly 30 per cent), but there is another reason for their super-hectic schedule. They are meeting each other quite frequently these days (the last such meeting was held on Saturday last week) to fix a minimum premium pricing for a diverse set of industries so that competition doesn’t harm any insurance company.

Participants at the Saturday meeting comprising both government-owned as well as private insurance companies agreed to give some discounts