IRDAI has proposed revising norms for Corporate Insurance Agents by allowing them to sell products for 9 Insurers in Life, General and health Insurance. This move will help to expand the product base and offer more choices to customers. Particularly in the case of Bancassurance this move will benefit banks to tie-up with more Insurers and offer a variety of products.
In case of Insurance Marketing Firm also IRDAI has proposed tie-up for 6 Insurance each in Life, General and Health. In Insurance Marketing Firm the Intermediary can sell only retail lines of business. It needs to be seen if in future IRDAI expands the role of IMF also.
The Insurance Brokers in India are allowed to sell products of all Insurance Companies. However after passing of above regulations, its impact needs to be assessed. The compliance and capital requirement in case of Insurance Broking is quite high in comparison to Corporate Agents or IMF. Maybe in future companies would like to opt for the corporate agency model rather than Insurance Broking model.
IRDAI in the last few months has been very aggressive to increase the penetration of the Insurance sector in the Country and for the first time has given business targets to all Insurance Companies. Also IRDAI is proposing to give licenses to Insurance Companies in Insurrect, Micro segment with lesser capital requirement so that penetration is increased.
The mandatory standards for battery components and their testing including cells of electric vehicles (EVS) will come into force by the end of this year. The government will also notify norms for the conformity of production (COP). The General Insurers must also review their strategy in Motor Insurance as with the arrival of Electric Vehicles the nature of loss portfolio may change. Motor Insurance is one of the largest portfolios in General Insurance.
LIC celebrated its 66th Anniversary on 1st September 2022. LIC was nationalized on 1st September 1956. LIC needs to gear up in the new environment where the Insurtech model is growing fast and it needs to remodel its distribution channels in alignment to competition in the Industry.
