Qatar Islamic picks GIFT City for reinsurance branch

Qatar Islamic Insurance Group has received a license from the International Financial Services Centre to establish a reinsurance branch in GIFT City, joining a run that has turned the Indian hub into something more than a filing exercise. Registrations and authorizations at the IFSC reached 1,213 as of March, up from 1,114 in December, while insurance and reinsurance volumes hit $1.2 billion in 2025 against $102 million in 2020, a more than 11-fold jump driven largely by non-life lines, according to Reinsurance News.

Qatar Islamic joins International General Insurance Holdings, Kuwait Re, Niyam, Echo Re and Partner Re on a roster that now spans Europe, Australia, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. The hub's local character deepened further earlier this month when EarthRe Insurance IFSC Limited became the first locally incorporated reinsurer to win IFSCA approval, and Singapore's MS First Capital Insurance began writing reinsurance from GIFT City on July 29. PB Fintech's joint group chief executive, Sarbvir Singh, told Reinsurance News that the draw is a more open and predictable regulatory environment.

Singh's comment is easy to file under ribbon-cutting, but the volume data gives it weight. More than 11-fold growth in five years is not a function of cheap office space; it says India-linked risk has found a domicile that global reinsurers want to write. The timing may prove awkward, because the broader market is at a point where pricing pressure is showing up in terms as much as rates, as this publication has argued, and each new GIFT City branch adds supply into that mix.

Whether the newcomers write their India books to the same conditions as the incumbents is now the test. EarthRe's local incorporation is the development to watch, because a domiciled reinsurer carries more commitment than a branch; if that model proves durable, GIFT City stops being a collection of flags and becomes the region's closest equivalent to a capital market for reinsurance.