Calcutta, Sept. 16: The gross premium income of the 12 general insurers grew 12.58 per cent during the first quarter of the current financial year to Rs 7,435.46 crore from Rs 6,629.13 crore a year ago.

Much of this growth came from health insurance and motor third-party policy sales.

In motor third-party insurance, premiums grew by 54.55 per cent to Rs 972.81 crore from Rs 629.43 crore a year ago.This is the result of detariffing and the introduction of risk pooling by the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDA).

Under risk pooling, insurers aggregate premiums for payment of claims and share the profit or loss proportionately. Private insurers are unwilling to offer third-party insurance because it is loss-making. However, the IRDA has stopped the practice.

In own-damaged motor insurance, which has been detariffed, premiums grew by just 8.96 per cent to Rs 1,921.75 crore from Rs 1,763.75 crore.

V. Ramaswamy, chairman and managing director of the public sector National Insurance Company, said, “After detariffing, the premium rates charged by different insurance companies for own-damaged portion came down by 15 to 18 per cent from the pre-January levels in the face of competition among insurers.”

Similarly, premiums from fire and engineering insurance, where the rates have come down by as much as 30 per cent after the detariffing in January, showed little improvement. In fire, it went down by 14.21 per cent to Rs 1,402.41 crore from Rs 1,634.77 crore.

Premiums in engineering grew by only 5.38 per cent to Rs 377.12 crore from Rs 357.84 crore. On the other hand, health insurance premiums increased 49.64 per cent to Rs 1,184.29 crore from Rs 791.44 crore.