About

In 2006, Lokanath P. Kar joined ICICI Lombard General Insurance, the largest private sector non-life insurance companies of India, as chief of legal and principle compliance officer after over 20 years of experience on the bar council in Delhi and in-house roles in the financial and corporate sectors. When Kar joined ICICI Lombard he established the legal department which is the first formal legal department of any non-life insurance company in India. Subsequently the department under Kar’s leadership has implemented new management technology tools in the areas of compliance, litigation and administration management, three systems that have been emulated across the industry to increase productivity and to manage the changes in regulation within the Indian insurance sector since 2000. In order to tackle the problem of less than half of private vehicles being insured at time of registration and at the behest of the General Insurance Council of India, Kar orchestrated a preferred a writ before the Supreme Court of India demanding long term compulsory insurance coverage for vehicles at the time of registration. The Supreme Court having taken cognizance of the matter had referred it to a judicial committee for examination and suggestion. Recently, on the basis of the recommendations of the committee, the Supreme Court of India has made a direction making it compulsory for private cars and two wheelers to obtain motor third party insurance for three years and five years respectively at the time of registration. On this major achievement Kar highlights that, ‘this judgement will have a very significant impact on the collection of motor premiums for the industry vis-à-vis the claim entitlement of the road accident victims of the country’. In September 2017, the legal department listed ICICI Lombard General Insurance as the first non-life company in India to be listed on the stock exchanges of India. The company being a regulated financial institution, it required a number of regulatory approvals before being able to be listed and Kar played a key role on this complex and lengthy process. In fact, Kar and his team managed the process expertly, even getting the company listed in record time. On his approach to protecting the company, Kar says ‘I have realised that legal risk or litigation risk do not behave differently than any other inherent risk categories the organisations are exposed to and that such risks can be mitigated or minimised like any other risks through proactive interventions’.