Weekly Insurance Round-up Tuesday, December 21, 2021

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We're back, with the next edition of Beshak's Weekly News Round-up - an analysis of all Insurance News & Updates, straight from our research desk! Don't forget to share your feedback with us, and give us a thumbs up if you find this helpful! 

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✴️ Term Insurance to become costlier and difficult to get 😥

✴️ Over ₹51,500 Cr funds remain unclaimed with Banks, MFs, Insurance Companies 😳

✴️ Star Health Insurance partners with Federal Bank for bancassurance 🏦

✴️ Liberty General Insurance joins hands with CSC e-Governance Services India 🤝🏻

✴️ ₹5.5 Cr raised by Insurance Samadhan in Pre-Series A round 🤑

✴️ One Assure, an Insuretech startup raises ₹5 Cr. in pre-seed funding 💸

✴️ Innovaccer raises $150 Mn in Series E round 💰

• The pandemic has forced insurance companies to tighten their underwriting rules. People planning to buy term insurance now will have to face stricter underwriting rules and pay higher premiums. 
• It will get even more difficult for people to buy a term insurance policy if they - 
  • Have an income of less than INR 5 lakhs. 
  • Are not graduates.
  • Follow an unhealthy lifestyle.
  • Suffer from pre-existing diseases.
• The mortality losses have been high for two years now. In fact, compared to last year, the mortality rate was higher this year. 
• The insurers, after facing a lot of pressure from reinsurers, have tightened their underwriting rules on both medical and financial fronts. 
• This is not the first time insurers are increasing their premiums. They had increased the premiums in the past because the losses faced by them due to Covid were huge.

Source: Money Control

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• On 14th December 2021, the Parliament was informed that funds amounting to over ₹51,500 Cr are lying unclaimed with financial institutions like banks, insurance companies, and mutual funds.
• As per RBI, ₹24,356 Cr. is unclaimed in Scheduled Cooperative Banks and ₹2,341 Cr is unclaimed in Urban Commercial Banks as of December 31, 2020.
• As per IRDAI, a total of ₹22,043.26 Cr. is lying unclaimed with life insurance companies and ₹1,241.81 Cr with non-life insurance companies as of 31st March 2021.
• In mutual funds, the unclaimed amount is ₹1,590.67 Cr which includes ₹671.88 Cr towards unclaimed redemption and ₹918.79 Cr. towards unclaimed dividend.
• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that as per the instructions given by RBI, banks are required to make a review of accounts that are inactive for more than one year, connect which such account holders and find out the reason for the same.
• Even IRDAI has mandated that all amounts that are unclaimed for a period of more than 10 years must be transferred to the Senior Citizens’ Welfare Fund (SCWF) on or before 1st March of the financial year.

Source: Business Today

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RECENT TIE-UPS

• With an aim to provide Star Health’s insurance products to its customers, Federal Bank has partnered with Star Health and Allied Insurance Co. Ltd. as a corporate agent.
• Through different distribution channels of the Federal Bank, customers will be able to access both health retail and group affinity products. 
• Federal Bank is an Indian private sector bank with over 1,291 banking outlets spread across the country. 
• Star Health & Allied Insurance Co. Ltd. is an Indian health insurance company based in Chennai. It provides services in health, personal accident, and overseas travel insurance, directly as well as through various channels, like agents, brokers, and online. 
• Beshak Take: Bancassurance models are gaining more popularity and success in the market. Such partnerships will: 
  • Allow customers to access complete financial solutions from their banks. 
  • Help banks diversify their customer portfolio as well as generate risk-free income and gain commission from insurers.
  • Help insurers reach more and more customers via the bank’s customer base, thus improving insurance penetration - which, in turn, will increase their premium turnover.

Source: Live Mint

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• Liberty Insurance has joined hands with CSC e-Governance Services India, with an aim of selling insurance products via the CSC network and thus increasing and strengthening its presence in rural areas across India.
• To begin with, the company will only be offering motor insurance products. Its prime focus is to improve insurance accessibility in rural areas via awareness creation, technology leverage, and product innovation.
• CSC or Common Service Centre scheme is one of the mission mode projects under the Digital India Programme. 
• CSCs are the access points for delivering essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education, agricultural services, etc.

Source: The Banking &Finance Post

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INVESTMENT NEWS

• In a pre-Series A round led by Equanimity Investments, Insurtech platform Insurance Samadhan raised ₹5.5 Cr. 
• The funding round saw participation from 9 Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, ZNL, and angel investors.
• Insurance Samadhan was started in 2018, with the motive to resolve insurance grievances like misselling, fraud, and claim rejections in Life, Health, and General Insurance. 
• The firm is now looking to upgrade its platform to an app that will offer claim management, insurance portfolio analysis, and policy servicing.

Source: Business Standard

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• An Insurtech startup, One Assure, has raised ₹5 Cr. in a pre-seed funding round which included investors like Arun Venkatachalam of the Murugappa family, currently part of the leadership team at CG Power Systems, Dell Technologies’ Asia and Japan President Amit Midha, Cloudnine Hospitals co-founder and MD Rohit MA, and Dunzo co-founder Dalvir Suri.
• Founded in October 2020 by Ruchir Kanakia and Shreyans Maini, One Assure is an insurance marketplace that sells health and term insurance, and offers services like renewals, porting, claim settlement support, learning, and advisory for products catering to physical and mental health.
• One Assure received its Direct Broker license from IRDAI in August 2021 and is currently functioning in beta mode. 
• The startup believes it is likely to achieve ₹750 Cr. in premiums processed by the end of FY21.

Source: Money Control

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• A healthcare software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Innovaccer has raised $150 Mn in Series E funding which brings the company’s total capital raised to over $375 Mn.
• The recently raised funds will be used by the company for research, development, and attracting new talents into the customer service, product, and engineering field. 
• They will also be expanding the Health Cloud suite which is a complete software platform that operates on the patient healthcare data repository.
• Founded in 2014 by IIT-Kharagpur graduates Abhinav Shashank and Kanav Hasija, and IIM-Ahmedabad alum Sandeep Gupta, Innovaccer monitors healthcare data and conveys actionable insights to hospitals, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and other businesses and organizations.

Source: Techstory

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