Exposure Draft on IRDAI (Insurance Services by Common Public Service Centers) Regulations, 2018

Background

Reference is drawn to IRDAI (Insurance Services by Common Service Centres) Regulations, 2015, that enables CSC-SPV to distribute insurance products. It is observed that the above regulations are very specific to the CSC which is established under the National e-Governance plan by M/s CSC E-governance Services India Ltd.

Requests from State Government entities

1. The Authority has also been receiving requests from entities such as mee-seva of Telengana and other states to allow them to distribute insurance products under the insurance CSC Model.
2. It is noted that similar state level entities have been set-up by State Governments to promote various Government to consumer services and business to consumer services. These being State Government entities can also be leveraged upon for insurance distribution.

Rationale for amendment

1. The CSC Regulations were issued in 2015. After that the Authority has issued other guidelines such as IMF, POS, Corporate Agents and MISP, thereby, creating new distribution channels which facilitates the spread of insurance. These channels have wider options in terms of sum insured and product categories. Moreover, the process of product approval is much simpler.

Proposal

In light of the various development in the distribution space, the insurance CSC-model though being a pioneer in 2015 has become outdated and requires reforms and improvement keeping with the changing times.

A review of the regulation may therefore be undertaken to streamline the regulatory framework and also facilitate State Government sponsored entities to participate in the distribution of insurance products.

The draft contains, amongst the others, the following changes:

Objective and definitions

1)         Stating the objective of the regulations

2)         Renaming the Regulations to IRDAI (Insurance Services by Common Public Service Centres) Regulations, 2018

3)         Redefining “Common Service Centres” as “Common Public Service Centres” to include “Common Service Centre” established under National e- Governance Plan by M/s CSC e-Governance Services India Limited or similar centers established by the Special Purpose Vehicle of respective State Governments.

4)         Defining “Common Public Service Centre” is an office place authorized by the CPSC-SPV to facilitate delivery of government, private and social sector services to citizens of India.

5)         Deleting reference to CSC Product.

6)         Defining “Village Level Entrepreneur-Ins” (VLE-Ins) is a VLE who can sell simple over the counter insurance products

7)         Replacing CSC-SPV with CPSC-SPV

8)         Replacement of the word “license” with the words “certificate of registration” in line with Act requirements.

9)         The draft regulations will supercede the existing IRDA (Insurance Services by Common Service Centre) Regulations, 2015.

Issuance of new certificates of registration and renewal of certificate of registration

1. Introduction of new regulation on issuance of duplicate certificate of registration
2. Increase in fees for new registration from Rs 5,000/- to Rs 10,000/-
3. Increase in fees for renewal of registration from Rs 1,000/- to Rs 2,000/-
4. VLE-Ins qualification, training and examination requirements on par with POS.
5. VLE-Ins code of conduct, functions, obligations same as RAP
6. No other change

Corporate Governance

7. CSC entitled to remuneration and rewards on par with other insurance intermediaries
8. Deletion of onboarding charges
9. RAP can sell all products available to insurance agents including POS products
10. VLE-Ins can sell only POS products
11. Reference to training methodology, certification and online examination deleted
12. RAP also allowed to sell all micro-insurance products, term insurance products and all government schemes underwritten by insurers.

Others

13. Revision in reporting formats
14. Principal Officer, RAP, VLE-Ins to have certificate based on Aadhaar No. in order to develop a common database for all intermediaries

You are requested to kindly offer your comments/ suggestions on the proposed regulations for consideration of the same by the department.  Please ensure that your comments/ suggestions in MS-WORD format reach us by 5^th September, 2018 in the format attached by e-mail at sanjay [at] irda [dot] gov [dot] in and csc [at] irda [dot] gov [dot] in

(Randip Singh Jagpal)
Chief General Manager

Source : Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. All Right Reserved.