At 10:1, life insurance agents outmatch mutual fund distributors

There are only 220,217 MF distributors compared to 2.1 million insurance agents

The mutual fund (MF) industry has lost further ground to life insurance players. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India’s (Irdai’s) annual report for 2018-2019 revealed that there were 2.1 million individual insurance agents, 10 times the total ‘feet on the street’ for the MF industry. 

According to industry estimates, there are 220,217 MF distributors at present.

Last year, the tally for individual insurance agents stood at 2 million, which was eight times the MF distributor count of 265,000.

“This has been a challenging year for MF distributors because of several regulatory changes. For smaller distributors, the viability of business has become