It is a mark of how entangled New India Assurance is in India’s financial plumbing that regulators once again, in March, designated it a “Domestic Systemically Important Insurer” (D-SII). It’s a title, held every year since 2019, that puts it in the august company of the State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, and LIC, its largest life insurer.

What this essentially means is: if these entities were to shake, the tremors would be widely felt. That’s the theory. In practice, New India has spent much of the last decade operating in a way that would make most actuaries wince.

Since 2015, for every Rs 100 it has earned in premiums, New India has spent Rs 117 on claims and expenses. Up until FY25. That number—the combined ratioCombined ratioThe combined ratio in insurance measures an insurer’s profitability by comparing the sum of its incurred losses and expenses to the earned premiums—is the insurance industry’s equivalent of a pulse. Under 100% means the insurer is making money from underwriting (assessing risk, pricing it, and offering coverage). A little over, say 102% or 105%, and it’s tolerable if investment income covers the gap.

But sustained years at 117% is… a different story.

To be fair, New India does pull the investment-income lever. Like most, it collects premiums, invests the float, and pays claims later. It’s a well-known insurance model that works when the float comes from well-priced risk. Less so when it’s the product of chronic underpricing.

Still, New India carries on. And it must—because it insures nearly everything the state touches. Government hospitals and oil rigs. Rural crops and industrial accidents. Ships, cars, planes, factories. It has done so since 1919, when it was founded by Dorabji Tata. Today, it is a state-owned behemoth, and in many ways it looks the part: venerable, ubiquitous, and financially leaky.

The D-SII designation, of course, is not a reward for excellence. It’s a recognition of scale and systemic exposure. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irdai) assigns it to firms that are too big and complex not to cause any collateral damage. That New India qualifies so easily says a lot about the system.

And yet, the company is not the worst offender. That distinction may belong to its public-sector peers like United India Insurance (10-year average combined ratio of 129%).