COO of  HDFC Standard Life Insurance  Paresh Parasnis has resigned from his post . When Queried about his resignation, Parasnis without confirming or denying the news told IANS: “I do not want to comment now on that.”
However, company officials told IANS that Parasnis’s resignation has nothing to do with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority’s (IRDA) Thursday order penalising the life insurer a whopping sum of Rs.1.47 crore.
The penalty is for rejecting 21 death claims in violation of the directions of the insurance regulator and also for excess payments made to distributors, including four group companies HDFC, HDFC Bank, HDFC Securities and HDB Financial Service, for services like selling policies, marketing expenses and others.
Though the IRDA has been penalising insurers in the recent times for various violations, one official has put it as “IRDA’s penalty mela”, saying the order on HDFC is unique.
For the first time, IRDA has explicitly ordered a company to debit the shareholders’ account and not the policy holders’ account so that the cost of regulatory non-compliance is not loaded on the policy holders.
The IRDA has also reprimanded HDFC Standard Life for various other violations in its order issued last week.
HDFC Standard Life is a joint venture between India’s HDFC Ltd and the UK’s Standard Life.