The Indian Insurance sector has witnessed an enormous transformation during and after the recovery from the great pandemic. The insurance sector has embodied several reformative measures to make insurance services emerge as a basic need of all Indian citizens. According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has galvanized its efforts and committed to providing ‘Insurance for All’ by the year 2047 on the occasion of the 100th year of India’s Independence celebration, where every citizen of the India, every Industry and business enterprise will be supported by appropriate insurance protection/solutions and aims to make Indian insurance sector globally attractive.
Taking more futuristic and forward-looking ingenuities, IRDAI has focused on insurance inclusion with an emphasis on accelerating new sectoral reforms and amending its regulations and policies. These reforms have fused to create a vibrant exceptional insurance ecosystem by changing its dynamics by benefitting the customers, insurers, intermediaries, and insurance distribution architecture. These liberal amendments like reducing the minimum paid-up capital for Insurance Web Aggregators to Rupees Twenty-Five Lakhs have carved out paths for new entrants such as existing web aggregators to enter the insurance business and enhance the touch points for insurance explorers.
Insurance Product innovations and curation of usage-based products like Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD), on-demand insurance, Out-of-pocket (deductibles), coinsurance, and copayments for insurance covered have taken the insurance market to explore and cater to serve new segments. It created competition offered differentiated products and benefitted millions of customers.
The distribution landscape is shifting towards digitization, and adopting technological integration and assimilation of innovative practices like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Cloud Computing, and Data Analytics will enable insurers to become more efficient and spread their reach. The technology-led operational efficiency should eventually reflect in affordable premiums for insurance clients.
The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is an evolution in distribution management and the digital network is set to expand its services and bring in revolution in the Insurance sector. IRDAI has announced the use of BimaSugam as its ONDC service which offers a digital network and central distribution marketplace for insurance products and services offered by distribution partners. Another impressive development is the introduction of like BimaVistar and BimaVahak scheme which aims at establishing a women-centric insurance distribution channel and stretching the insurance services to the last mile (semi-urban, rural areas, and gram panchayats).
These developments will generate and create massive demand for a trained workforce; both fresher and experienced having domain knowledge in insurance, management, and technology for the rapidly growing insurance sector and allied Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector at large for various roles in the areas of underwriting and risk assessment, claim management, product management, finance and remittance processing, policy acquisition, sales, and distribution, etc.
The sensitivity toward the necessity for insurance coverage among Indian citizens was created predominantly due to the pandemic crisis. When the visionary drive of IRDAI, and the resilience towards the pandemic pervaded together it can potentially provide exponential growth opportunities and benefits for all the stakeholders and the insurance (both life and non-life) sector at large.
