Nepal Reinsurance Company (NRC) has been expanding its business internationally, and collected Rs100 million in premiums in the first 11 months of the fiscal year.

Its customers are spread across 15 countries including Saarc member countries except India. The company has clients in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Papua New Guinea and a number of African countries including Kenya.

“We have aimed to increase premium collection to Rs150 million by the end of this fiscal year,” said NRC Chief Executive Officer Chirayu Bhandari.

NRC is the only reinsurer in Nepal. Four of its foreign clients are reinsurance companies based in Kenya and Bhutan.

In the last fiscal year, NRC collected premiums totalling Rs3.5 billion from its domestic and foreign clients. The company sells all types of insurance except aviation and life, it said.

The government established NRC in November 2014 in a bid to stem massive capital outflows for reinsurance purposes. The Insurance Pool set up in 2003 to cover damage caused by terrorism was later converted into NRC.

The company has a paid-up capital of Rs2.1 billion. The government owns 43 percent of the stock, 17 non-life insurers hold 39 percent of the shares and life insurers hold 18 percent. Bhandari said they raised the paid-up capital to Rs5 billion in the last fiscal year.

According to him, they have targeted increasing the capital to Rs15 billion.

“We are planning to make it mandatory for life and non-life insurers to buy stock in NRC in coordination with the government.”

There are 17 non-life insurance companies operating in the country. Almost all of them have been buying reinsurance coverage from NRC. However, life insurers are still doing business with foreign companies.

“By involving life insurance companies as stakeholders, we can make them buy reinsurance from the domestic company.”

The government has mentioned encouraging Nepali insurers to buy reinsurance domestically in the budget statement for fiscal 2017-18.

“Since Nepali insurance companies have been sending large amounts of money to foreign reinsurance companies to buy reinsurance coverage, a mandatory arrangement will be made for Nepali life and non-life insurance companies to buy most of their reinsurance coverage from Nepal Reinsurance Company,” the budget statement said.

According to NRC, it has been conducting retrocession transactions (reinsuring reinsured risks) with Sava Reinsurance of Slovenia, General Insurance Corporation of India and Hannover Reinsurance of Germany.