<div id="readability-page-1"><div id="parent_top_div">Shares of life insurance companies came under pressure on Tuesday, with SBI Life Insurance and Canara HSBC Life Insurance seeing the sharpest declines among listed life insurers. This followed comments by M Nagaraju, secretary at the Department of Financial Services, in an interview with ET Now, where he said that banks are being asked to avoid exclusive tie-ups with their own insurance subsidiaries and instead remain neutral. Shares of SBI Life closed 3.32 per cent down on Wednesday at Rs 1,915, recovering from the intra-day low of Rs 1,892.50 on the BSE. Among other life insurers, shares of Canara HSBC Life Insurance ended 4.36 per cent down at Rs 143.80. ICICI Prudential’s shares ended 1.40 per cent down at Rs 549.95, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) was down 0.5 per cent at Rs 824.05, Max Financial Services was down 2.32 per cent to Rs 1,649.75, and HDFC Life Insurance was marginally up at Rs 614.20. “SBI Life derives almost 60%+ of its business from banca channel and substantial part of that is from SBI and SBI doesn’t follow an open architecture model. A matter as important as mandatory open architecture in India can only happen within the powers of IRDAI and IRDAI needs to have a two-way communication process between the participants and the regulator. Hence, we don’t see this happening any time soon,” said Ganapathy, managing director, head of financial services research at Macquarie Capital. According to analysts at Emkay, there is a strong case for bancassurance to remain exclusive. An exclusive tie-up eliminates the need for insurance company salespersons to be present across bank branches, hence reducing distribution costs. Secondly, data affirms that the distribution cost in exclusive bancassurance has been much lower over the years; this enables the insurer to offer affordable products. Thirdly, by offering products of its own subsidiary with the parent brand name, there is a higher amount of ownership and care in the selling process, resulting in lower mis-selling. “In this backdrop, forcing banks to go open-architecture will reverse the cost advantage and eventually drive up prices for consumers. As far as the arguments of choice for consumers are concerned, the consumer has many channels outside the bank to buy insurance, including agents, other banks, brokers, and now Bima Sugam too. In the backdrop of the government’s heightened concern about increasing distribution cost in insurance, the idea of forced open architecture is conflicting with the idea of reducing costs,” analysts at Emkay said in their report. Nagaraju, who took charge as the secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS), Ministry of Finance, Government of India on August 19, 2024, will retire on May 31, 2026. Earlier in the year, the Economic Survey had also said that the insurance industry needs to reduce overall costs and distribution outgo to improve affordability, which will enable it to tap into the ‘missing middle’ and reverse the decline in penetration. The escalating cost of acquisition is a structural constraint on the sector’s evolution — limiting inclusion, eroding consumer value, and threatening long-term stability of the sector, the survey highlighted. The high-cost model of the industry is acting as a risk to the core financial strength of insurers. Despite an increase in top-line growth, private life insurers have seen stagnation in their net profit, as margins are compressed by escalating acquisition expenses. Similarly, the non-life sector faces high combined ratios, which is forcing them to rely on investment income to subsidise operations, exposing the bottom line of the companies to capital market volatility. </div></div>

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SBI 人壽和 Canara HSBC 人壽保險的股票在金融服務部秘書 M Nagaraju 呼籲銀行避免與其保險子公司進行獨家合作後大幅下跌。SBI 人壽的股票收盤下跌 3.32%，報 1,915 印度盧比，而 Canara HSBC 人壽則下跌 4.36%，報 143.80 印度盧比。分析師認為，獨家銀行保險合作關係降低了分銷成本並增強了產品所有權，暗示強制開放架構可能會提高消費者的價格。保險行業面臨高客户獲取成本影響盈利能力和市場穩定性的挑戰

SBI Life, Canara HSBC Life shares fall after DFS comments on tie-ups

Business Standard

SBI Insurance Group Co., Ltd.

匯豐控股有限公司

Macquarie Group Limited

HSBC 5xShortSG241213

匯豐控股

滙豐

在 DFS 對合作關係發表評論後，SBI Life 和 Canara HSBC Life 的股價出現下跌