1. As part of the comprehensive review of Regulations being undertaken by the IRDAI, to enhance the ease of doing business and also reduce compliance burden for stakeholders while also ensuring that interests of policyholders continues to be protected, the IRDAI constituted an internal committee to review the IRDAI (Regulatory Sandbox) Regulations. The Committee examined these Regulations and after detailed deliberations recommended the revised regulations.
2. Based on the recommendation of the Committee, the IRDAI issues the following proposed amendments to the Regulatory Sandbox regulations and seeks comments from the public at large on the proposed amendments.
3. The amendment to the regulations are based on the following approach:
a. Adoption of principle based approach over rule based approach.
b. No hard-coding of values, numbers, etc in the regulations.
c. Operational issues to be covered in the master circular.
d. Regulations to facilitate introduction of innovative ideas/ new concepts across the insurance value chain
4. In light of the above, values/ numbers which were part of the regulations such as minimum networth, fees, eligibility criteria, application form, experiment period, extension of time period of permission, allocated time, etc are proposed to be shifted to the master circular.
5. Based on the experience gained and new developments in the market the following are proposed as new additions to the regulations:
a. Definition of “competent authority”
b. Excluding areas involving prudential and financial condition/ stability matters, such as capital, liquidity, investment, solvency, reserving and such other areas as decided by the Authority from time to time from the purview of Regulatory Sandbox.
c. Objective of regulations to explicitly state – “facilitate innovation in the insurance sector while ensuring orderly development of the insurance sector and protection of interests of the policyholders”
d. Conditions for grant of permission to include “promotes innovation beneficial to insurance sector in India”
e. To facilitate introduction of Inter-Regulatory Sandbox proposal wherein “the process and procedures in dealing with regulatory sandbox applications that cuts across more than one financial sector” will be permitted
6. The draft Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Regulatory Sandbox) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 is annexed herewith (Annexure-A). All the stakeholders are requested to forward their comments / suggestions, if any, on the proposed regulations in the attached format (Annexure- B) on or before 5:00 PM on 25th November, 2024 to anjaly.jolly@irdai.gov.in and randip@irdai.gov.in. o
