Reliance Life Insurance IPO may be delayed

The insurance regulator IRDA, or the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, has said that initial public offerings (IPO) approvals will not be on case-to-case basis. This may mean that the Reliance Life Insurance IPO may have to wait for now.

Here is a verbatim transcript of Priyal Guliani's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

It seems like Reliance Life Insurance IPO will have to wait for sometime. Reliance Life Insurance has not completed ten years of operations as of now. There is lack of clarity in terms of the Insurance Acts specifying that company can list after ten years but there is a lot of ambiguity on what will happen before that.

Reliance Life Insurance had earlier sought approvals from the Law Ministry and Finance Ministry. What we understand is that while the Law Ministry has given the approval the Finance Ministry has looked for comments from the insurance regulator.

The insurance regulator clearly mentions that this point in time they are looking at disclosure norms, and setting-up valuation norms along with ICAI and also with regard to Red Herring Drafts--they are working with SEBI on those issues. So until and unless these three parameters are taken care of completely, which would be for all the companies together, there will not be any approvals on a case-to-case basis.

So going by what the chairman has said we understand that Reliance Life Insurance IPO will have to wait for now.