That’s the general gist of this article at The Hindu Business Line:
Mr K.K. Srinivasan, Member (non-life), IRDA said that actuaries are charging exorbitant sums for the approval of each product.[...]
Mr Srinivasan said that the mismatch between demand and supply had caused the aberration in terms of the cost of actuaries. He said that around 4,200 students had enrolled with the Actuarial Society of India and the next couple of years would see a change in the disturbing imbalance of the supply of actuaries and standards being restored in the profession.
The article spotlights one of the “dirty little secrets” of the actuarial profession — that the credentialing process does a pretty good job of restricting supply, which in turn leads to comparatively high demand with correspondingly high salaries or hourly rates.
Given that the profession is relatively just getting started in India, from what I understand, I can only imagine that that phenomenon is more exaggerated there.
Hopefully this will ease concerns among some P&C actuaries of their work being outsourced.