You have established benchmarks like price to earnings and price to book ratios in general insurance and health. "If you look at general insurance, the business model is a lot better established than the life side," said Shashwat Sharma, partner at KPMG. "In general insurance, you make profit sitting on your P&L. "Life insurance is too complicated and lot of it depends on actuarial assumptions whereas general insurance is more like any other business - liabilities are one year and less complicated," said Abizer Diwanji, national head of financial services at EY. "State-run insurers are financially strong unlike government-owned banks, which are hobbled by bad loans.Factors that need to be assessed include investment profit, underwriting profit, brand value and solvency margin.

Source: Economic Times July 03, 2016 21:33 UTC