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Underwriting & Risk

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Underwriting & Risk

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October 6, 2026

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Underwriting & Risk - June 30, 2026 - 6 min read

Delegated Authority, Binders and Bordereaux: Underwriting Governance for MGAs and Coverholders in India 2026

With the Insurance Amendment Bill bringing managing general agents formally inside the intermediary definition, delegated underwriting in India is moving from a grey area toward a regulated discipline. This post sets out how a binder defines the authority an insurer hands to an MGA, what underwriting guidelines and limits must sit inside it, and how bordereaux reporting and audit rights let an insurer keep control of a book it does not directly write.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 30, 2026 - 6 min read

Building Commercial Capacity Through Treaty Structures: Quota Share, Surplus and Excess of Loss in India 2026

Most Indian commercial capacity is not a single number an underwriter picks. It is assembled in layers of proportional and non-proportional treaty that sit behind the direct policy. This post explains how a quota share, a surplus treaty and per-risk and catastrophe excess of loss combine to set the line a direct insurer can offer, why ceding commission and reinstatements matter, and how treaty terms quietly constrain a book before facultative is even needed.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 30, 2026 - 7 min read

Insuring the Coal Plant Nobody Wants to Cover: Thermal Coal Power Availability and Underwriting in India 2026

India is still commissioning thermal coal capacity even as global insurers and reinsurers withdraw from new coal construction and operation. That opens a widening gap between domestic energy policy and the cover a coal independent power producer or its EPC contractor can actually buy. This post sets out which insurers have published coal restrictions, what it means for property, machinery breakdown and erection cover, and how brokers structure programmes when international capacity narrows.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 30, 2026 - 6 min read

Warranties, Conditions Precedent and Basis Clauses: Where Underwriting Intent Meets Claims Enforceability in Indian Policy Wordings 2026

An underwriter loads a fire or liability policy with warranties intending them as risk controls, but Indian law treats a warranty as a stipulation in the nature of a condition precedent. Breach can let the insurer repudiate even where it did not cause the loss. This post sets out how brokers distinguish warranties, conditions precedent and bare conditions, how Indian courts enforce them, and how to negotiate the language at placement.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 25, 2026 - 11 min read

When Capital Meets Accumulation: How the Indian RBC Catastrophe Charge Will Discipline Zonal Aggregation Limits

IRDAI completed its second quantitative impact study for the risk-based capital framework in 2025 and is drafting regulations. Once live, the catastrophe module attaches a measurable capital cost to every crore of coastal or seismic accumulation, turning loose zonal limits into a hard capital constraint that brokers can read and place ahead of.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 23, 2026 - 11 min read

Recalibrating the Cat Model After a Record Loss Year: Secondary Perils, AAL Loadings and the Indian Property Book

Swiss Re's sigma 1/2026 put secondary perils at roughly nine in ten of 2025's record insured nat-cat bill of well over USD 100 billion. This post shows how an Indian underwriting desk should re-weight average annual loss and event loadings toward flood, hail and convective storm without over-fitting one bad year.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 22, 2026 - 10 min read

Microcracks and the 12-Month Wall: Underwriting Ground-Mount Solar Hail Damage and the BI Indemnity Gap in 2026

India passed 272 GW of non-fossil capacity by January 2026, and hail is exposing two weaknesses in solar placements: micro-cracking that silently bleeds yield without obvious damage, and a standard twelve-month business interruption period that cannot survive real module replacement timelines. Here is how to rewrite both.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 21, 2026 - 10 min read

Designing the Trigger, Owning the Basis Risk: A Parametric Catastrophe Underwriting Manual for Indian Commercial Buyers

Parametric covers have moved from informal-sector heat pilots into corporate property and business-interruption programmes. This desk-level manual shows brokers how to interrogate a trigger, model basis risk, set the payout curve, and position a parametric layer alongside the indemnity tower for cat-exposed Indian accounts.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 20, 2026 - 10 min read

Underwriting Above the Snowline: GLOF Exposure for Himalayan Hydropower, Transmission and Project Cargo in 2026

Glacial lake outburst floods are a low-frequency, total-loss peril that ordinary STFI and flood wordings handle badly. The 2023 Teesta-III loss, where GLOF cover sat capped at Rs 500 crore against a Rs 11,400 crore sum insured, shows why brokers need a deliberate GLOF underwriting framework for Himalayan project risk.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 19, 2026 - 10 min read

IS 1893:2025 Redraws the Hazard Map: What the New Seismic Code and Zone 6 Mean for Earthquake Underwriting and Retrofit Credits

The Bureau of Indian Standards drafted a probabilistic seismic code with a top-tier Zone 6, then withdrew it in March 2026. The hazard picture it surfaced does not revert with the gazette. This post turns that signal into earthquake rate movement, retrofit-credit logic and sum-insured adequacy for brokers.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 18, 2026 - 9 min read

Reading GIC Re's Numbers: Loss-Making Segments, Obligatory Cession and Retrocession in India 2026

GIC Re sits at the centre of the Indian non-life market as the national reinsurer. The health of its segment-level results in fire, agriculture, health and aviation shapes the treaty terms every primary insurer can offer. This piece reads the reinsurer's own underwriting economics: the obligatory cession it receives, the segments that have run loss-making, and the retrocession it buys to protect its tail. It then explains why all of that flows back into the capacity and conditions a commercial buyer sees at renewal.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

Hail Becomes a Costed Peril: Severe Convective Storm Accumulation Underwriting for Indian Solar, Agri and Stockyard Risks in 2026

Aon's January 2026 report named severe convective storms the costliest insured peril of the century, and hail drives most of it. Indian underwriters have buried this exposure inside undifferentiated STFI loadings. This is how brokers should expect SCS to be isolated, zoned, sub-limited and separately deductibled on spring placements.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 17, 2026 - 14 min read

Underwriting OT and ICS Cyber Risk for Indian Manufacturing in 2026: The Property and Cyber Boundary

As Indian factories connect their plant floors to corporate networks, a cyber intrusion can now stop a line, damage machinery and trigger business interruption, exposures that standard cyber policies and property policies each handle only partly. This post sets out the OT/IT convergence problem, the physical-damage-from-cyber gap, the silent-cyber and property overlap, and how underwriters assess and structure cover for operational-technology risk.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 16, 2026 - 8 min read

Occupancy and Protection Grading in India 2026: Turning Loss-Control Survey Data Into Underwriting Decisions Under De-Tariffed Pricing

With fire rates de-tariffed, the underwriter's discretion now rests on how well a risk's occupancy, construction and protection are graded, and that grading is only as good as the loss-control survey behind it. This piece explains how occupancy classification, protection grading and survey data translate into rate, terms and capacity in 2026, and how commercial buyers can use the survey to earn better pricing rather than dread it.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 15, 2026 - 7 min read

The Dry-Monsoon Underwriting Trap: Why India's Below-Normal 2026 Forecast Should Not Loosen Flood Underwriting

The India Meteorological Department's 2026 forecast of a below-normal monsoon, at around 92 percent of the long-period average (with a model error of plus or minus 5 percent) under developing El Nino conditions, invites a dangerous assumption: that a dry year means a benign flood year. This piece explains why seasonal-average rainfall is a poor guide to commercial flood loss, how localised cloudbursts and urban flash floods detach from the headline number, and how underwriters and buyers should treat a below-normal forecast.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 14, 2026 - 8 min read

The De-Tariffing Correction in India 2026: STFI, IIB Burning Costs and the Return of Minimum Rates Through the Reinsurance Treaty

De-tariffing of fire wordings and rates from April 2024 was meant to free pricing, but a sharp slide in fire and property rates pushed discipline back through the reinsurance treaty rather than the tariff. This piece explains how minimum storm, tempest, flood and inundation (STFI) and earthquake rates tied to flood and seismic zone, and IIB burning costs built by occupancy class in rate-per-mille terms, are quietly re-anchoring fire pricing in 2026, and how a commercial buyer should read a quote against those floors.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 14, 2026 - 14 min read

ESG in the Underwriting Room: How Climate, Transition and Governance Risk Are Repricing Indian Commercial Property and Liability in 2026

ESG has moved from the boardroom into the underwriting room, where physical climate risk now feeds property rating, transition risk loads carbon-intensive industries, and governance failures drive D&O claims. This post sets out what ESG data underwriters now request, how greenwashing in submissions creates its own exposure, and how buyers in steel, cement and power should prepare for an underwriting view that prices these factors.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 14, 2026 - 13 min read

Underwriting D&O for Newly Listed Indian Companies in 2026: The Post-IPO Step-Change in Exposure

An IPO transforms a company's directors-and-officers risk overnight: prospectus liability attaches, public shareholders can sue, SEBI enforcement reaches the board, and securities-class-action exposure appears. This post sets out how underwriters price and structure D&O for fresh Indian listings, what IPO and POSI cover does, how SEBI LODR and enforcement drive the risk, and what governance signals underwriters look for.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 12, 2026 - 9 min read

Risk-Based Capital and Ind AS 117 in India 2026: How the Capital and Accounting Overhaul Reshapes Commercial Underwriting

India's general insurers are moving toward a risk-based capital regime and Ind AS 117 reporting, with the original April 2026 timeline now contested by a General Insurance Council request for a year's extension. This piece explains why the twin reform matters for commercial underwriting: capital will be charged in proportion to the risks an insurer actually writes, and profit will be recognised differently, which changes appetite, pricing and line size on volatile property and casualty risks.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 12, 2026 - 15 min read

Underwriting Product Liability for Indian Auto-Component Exporters to the US and EU in 2026

An Indian auto-component maker shipping to US and EU vehicle programmes carries product-liability exposure shaped by foreign litigation, recall economics and contractual flow-down from the OEM, not by the Indian claims environment it knows. This post sets out the jurisdictional exposure, the recall and financial-loss extensions, the OEM vendor-liability flow-down, sum-insured adequacy for foreign claims, and what underwriters assess on quality and traceability.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 9, 2026 - 17 min read

Port and Terminal Operator Liability Underwriting in India 2026: TOLL, Stevedore Liability and Care-Custody-Control

Indian port and terminal operators carry a layered liability exposure: legal liability for the cargo and property of others in their care, custody and control, stevedore and cargo-handling liability, damage to port equipment, marine and pollution risk, and the indemnities written into concession contracts. Underwriting the class means reading the terminal operator legal liability cover, the contractual position and the Major Port Authorities Act context together.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 8, 2026 - 16 min read

PML, MFL and the COPE Study: How Indian Property Underwriters Derive Maximum Loss and How Brokers Challenge an Inflated PML

Probable Maximum Loss and Maximum Foreseeable Loss are the numbers that drive property reinsurance, net retention and sum-insured adequacy in the post-de-tariff Indian market, and they are derived from a COPE study (Construction, Occupancy, Protection, Exposure). This piece works through how PML and MFL are built from COPE, how separation and sprinkler credits move them, and how a broker can challenge a PML the underwriter has set too high.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Underwriting & Risk - June 7, 2026 - 16 min read

Bulk Drug and API Plant Property Underwriting in India 2026: Solvent Fire Load, Reactor Hazard and Supply-Concentration BI

Active pharmaceutical ingredient and bulk drug plants combine large flammable-solvent inventories, exothermic reactor chemistry, hazardous-area electrical classification and a loss history of solvent fires and reactor runaways at Indian API clusters. Property underwriting has to treat the process-fire and explosion exposure seriously and size business interruption against real supply-concentration in the global API market.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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