NewzVille Desk
The Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance held an event chaired by Secretary, DFS to launch the domestic insurance pool, namely ‘Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool’ (BMIP) of ₹14,337 crores yesterday, with a sovereign guarantee of ₹12,980 crores to facilitate continuous maritime insurance coverages.
The pool covers all maritime risks such as Hull and Machinery, Cargo, P&I and War risk for Indian flagged or controlled vessels or vessels destined to or starting from India, in the context of the current Middle East tensions.
Senior officers from Department of Financial Services including Special Secretary Sanjay Lohiya, Additional Secretary Debasish Prusty, and CMD, General Insurance Corporation of India Hitesh Joshi, CMD, New India Assurance Company Limited, Girija Subramanian, Secretary General, General Insurance Council Kasturi Sengupta and Director, Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Opesh Kumar Sharma wwere attended the event.
A Governing Body has been constituted to oversee the functioning of the pool, including approvals regarding the invocation of the sovereign guarantee. In addition, an Underwriting Committee (UC) responsible for ensuring prudent, consistent and technically sound underwriting of risks ceded to the pool has been formed.
GIC Re is the pool administrator, which will submit the returns, details of re-insurance arrangement, and statements on performance of the pool.
Policies will be issued by domestic insurers that are Pool members, using the combined underwriting capacity of the Pool. These risks would then be reinsured by all Pool members, in proportion to their capacity commitment in the Pool.
