More than a year after Oman's Capital Market Authority (CMA) announced plans to launch an insurance scheme for domestic stock market participants, there seem to be no signs of it, said the Gulf News Saturday.
The scheme was to cover crime and liability exposures to the CMA, Muscat Securities Market (MSM), Muscat Depository and Securities Registration Co (MDSRC), stockbroking companies and MSM members licensed by CMA.
Queries to the CMA brought the reply, "We are working on the scheme." CMA wrote to all parties seeking their stand on the scheme, the daily said, quoting the letter as saying “it would be operational by last November 1st.” Officials once said two local insurers had been shortlisted and reinsurance was being arranged through Lloyds of London.
The industry now wonders whether one of them was Onic Insurance, which itself is said to be on its way to winding up.
Some brokerages in Oman said the scheme was not carefully thought out before it was finalized.
"The authorities should have involved us also when this was conceived. Though the re-insurer has already been decided, nobody has any clue about which local insurance companies won the scheme," one broker said – Albawaba.com
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