First NRB life insurer gets licence

The insurance regulator yesterday awarded a licence to NRB Islamic Life Insurance Company as the first non-resident Bangladeshi (NRB) insurer in the country.

With that, Bangladesh now has 33 life insurance companies and 46 non-life insurance companies.

"Bangladesh still lags behind other countries in education, health and autism insurance. So we are targeting to work here," said M Mahfuzur Rahman, vice-chairman of the new insurance company.

"We will reach our NRBs, who are earning money for the country, to give them insurance coverage," he said, adding that the company's chairman, Kibria Golam Mohammad, is well-established in Italy and has a huge network in Europe.

"We will target the Europe market strongly," said Rahman, who is a former executive director of Bangladesh Bank. The company's paid-up capital is Tk 18 crore and it has 12 directors.

However, the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority has attached a condition that the NRB Islamic Life Insurance will have to get listed with the stock market in the next three years and raise a minimum fund of Tk 12 crore.

Life insurance penetration in Bangladesh was 0.3 per cent in 2019 while the average for emerging countries was 1.7 per cent, according to Swiss Re, a leading global re-insurer.

In the year, overall insurance penetration was less than 0.5 per cent, which was 0.57 per cent in 2019 and 0.55 per cent the year before.