Budget 2025: Insurance sector expects incentives, innovation

THE insurance industry is expecting a host of policy measures from the forthcoming budget and topping the wish-list is ending the double taxation on pensioners, lowering, if not ending, GST on insurance, especially on health products, and a closure for the much-delayed insurance amendments bill that may likely bring in a composite licensing regime for the sector.

- BENN KOCHUVEEDAN @Mumbai

HDFC Life chief executive Vibha Padalkar expects the budget to end some tax relief for pensioners who are buying annuity products. "Currently, a pensioner is taxed on both sides-first when she withdraws the pension and then while withdrawing an annuity product that she bought with her pension money. This is double taxation and the industry and the public expect a relief on this front," she t