Buying insurance is easy. Knowing what you bought is harder

Summary

Irdai’s proposed reforms aim to make insurance pricing, commissions and distribution more transparent. But policyholders must still understand their cover and stay prepared for claims and renewals.

Here is a number worth sitting with. Between FY23 and FY25, what insurers paid corporate agents grew 125%. The premium those policies brought in grew 28%.

Your premium paid for that gap. So what did you get for it after the sale?

For most policyholders, very little. Buying insurance feels easy; knowing what you bought often does not. That is no accident. Most distribution models earn their margin when a policy is issued. Renewals, claims and a family searching for a policy document in a hospital corridor have rarely been anyone's job.

On 23 September, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) released a consultation paper, Recalibrating Economics of Insurance Distribution, open for comments until 25 October. These are proposals, not final rules. But the regulator is finally asking the right question: who owns the customer's experience once the sale is done?

See the price without giving away your number

Irdai wants to ban dark patterns, such as demanding your phone number before showing a product's price. Access to information, it says, should not be a lead generation opportunity.

The lesson: If a seller won't show the price and exclusions upfront, that tells you something about the seller.

One page, in plain language

Standardised one-page sheets would put waiting periods, co-payments, sub-limits and room-rent caps in one place.