National Insurance Company Limited, United India Insurance Company Limited & Oriental India Insurance Company Limited to be Merged

The news of three major PSU General Insurance Companies has been doing rounds since the past few months. As per the sources, the companies, namely United India Insurance, Oriental Insurance, National Insurance Company will soon be merged into a single insurance entity.

Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister announced in her maiden Budget 2019-20 speech, proposing to amend the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Act, 1972 to allow the merger of non-life insurance companies. The Finance Bill, announced alongside the Budget 2019-20, proposed replacement of the “there will be four companies” statement of a 1972 act section with “there will up to four companies”.

Anurag Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, recently informed the Lok Sabha that three public-sector General Insurance Companies will be merged soon.

The former Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech of 2018-19 had also announced the merger of these three PSU General Insurance companies. However, backed then no major steps were taken in this regard.