Mumbai, Aug. 15: A wave of consolidation is passing over the insurance industry, but some players feel there is still room for more insurers, especially in the non-life segment.

Non-life insurance penetration is a mere 0.8 per cent, whereas in case of life insurance, it is around 3 per cent.

There are 24 life insurers, including the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation, while there are 29 non-life insurers, of which seven are state-run.

There are two specialised insurers - the Agriculture Insurance Company, and ECGC, and the sole reinsurer GIC Re.

The industry wants more players to join the bandwagon to increase penetration.

"All the non-life companies are not doing well and underwriting losses continue to be a major worry. I think more and more players should be brought under insurance cover and for that we need more players," National Insurance Company chairman Sanath Kumar said.

Private players also support this and say that consolidation is far away despite the recent mergers in the industry with HDFC Life and Max Life teaming up and the acquisition of L&T General Insurance by HDFC Ergo.

"It is too early to go for consolidation. There are very few players and the penetration is too low in the country when it comes to general insurance," Liberty Videocon General Insurance chief executive Roopam Asthana said.

"It is only a question of a few promoters that don't want to put any further capital into their ventures. So I will call some of the recent consolidations as accommodation rather than consolidation," he said.

Bajaj Allianz Life managing director Anuj Agarwal said, "We will have to see if the objective of the recent two mergers is served before we conclude if it is the right time to go for consolidation."

Reliance General Insurance chief executive Rakesh Jain feels there are now a reasonable number of players in the non-life space. Some of them may think of merging with the companies that are larger in size. But it will be based on three basic principles which include new geography, new customer segment and new products, he said.