Where is the Indian General Insurance market heading.

The Indian Insurance market after opening up in 2001 has come up a long way. If we talk about the General Insurance sector specifically the private players have proved to be very strong competition for the PSU players. The market which was supposed to be much cleaner in the tariffed scenario has become more of a mess after detariffing coming into existence from Jan 1,2007. Although this means flexibility to the Insurers in pricing their products upto a certain extent but has initiated a price war among the players. Customer has been the major beneficiary in this whole number game. Be it a retail or a corporate customer both have their own share of perks in terms of getting the best deal in getting the requisite insurance. But what the insurers need to be wary about in this detariffed scenario is to follow the best underwriting practice. A large drop in pricing can prove to be a big dent on the bottomline of the insurers. The scenario is that not dropping the prices means loss of business and large drop in prices could impact the profitability. Although IRDA has capped the discounts on rates still not every player is in a position to drop the rates to the maximum extent. This makes it easy for some players to increase their topline with lesser efforts. What I personally feel is that this has not left a uniformity in the competition.