India’s national reinsurance company, General Insurance Corporation (GIC Re), could be moving to open a subsidiary in Russia as the firm looks to increase the volume of foreign business it writes, according to reports from The Hindu Business Line.
GIC Re’s long-term goal is to maintain a 50:50 split in foreign and domestic underwriting, with the firm currently closer to 70:30.
Reports also suggest GIC Re is considering the establishment of an office in Brazil in order to serve the South American market.
GIC Re General Manager Devesh Srivastava noted that property is the firm’s “bread and butter” in the international market, that it is currently the world’s largest agricultural reinsurer.
In addition, GIC Re is aiming to expand the business being written from its recently-established Lloyd’s syndicate last April from £50 million to £78 million, a target Srivastava told BuissnessLine he is confident of meeting.
“Next year, we will include a bit more, and we will gradually make it a full-fledged syndicate. We have granular plans that we want to achieve over the next 5-7 years,” he said.
The syndicate is managed by Pembroke, Liberty Mutual Company’s specialist Lloyd’s managing agency, and was supposedly the first Lloyd’s syndicate to be funded exclusively by capital from an Indian reinsurance group.
