Irdai mulls open pool for insurance agents

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) is mulling having an open architecture for insurance agents. Though the proposal is at an early stage, the regulator has suggested a pool of agents to industry stakeholders in recent discussions. As of January, the life insurance sector had 2.1 million individual agents.

In April 2014, the number was 2.18 million, according to data from the Life Insurance Council. In the intervening period, 503,130 agents joined the sector while 583,009 exited.

An industry official said that all agents could be trained and be part of a common pool for the industry. “It is not clear whether or not the entire tied-agent system would be done away with. However, a proposal has been mooted for a pool of trained agents so that penetration can improve through better distribution,” he said.  

Irdai had recently issued a set of proposals for appointment of agents, under which it had also asked insurers to check whether or not prospective agents had ever been black-listed. It had also said no individual shall act as an agent for more than one life insurer, one general insurer, one health insurer and one of each of other mono-line insurers.