The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) have formed two special committees to explore and suggest ways to promote e-commerce in the life and general sector to increase insurance penetration and bring financial inclusion. The two committees comprises of five members each and each committee have to finalize a report with recommendations within four weeks.
The special committees have been formed including the captains of various industries as members and include Sandeep Bakshi, CEO, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited, and Tapen Singhel, CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited. The regulator, IRDA said that e-commerce has changed the way of business conducted across the world. It had made people easy and convenient to buy a product online and has revolutionized the manner in which products are sold across the world.
As India also offers products to being sold and delivered using the electronic platform to millions of customers it is the right time for the country to extend its opportunity into the insurance space. To increase insurance penetration and to bring financial inclusion in a cost-effective manner the authority has inclined to facilitate the promotion of e-commerce in insurance space. This in turn lowers the cost of transacting insurance business and brings higher efficiency to have a greater reach by suitably leveraging the government initiative of Digital India which is aimed at creating a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.
Therefore IRDA has decided that to form two groups one for life insurance and the other for general insurance (which will also include health insurance) consisting of experts from regulatory body, insurers, intermediaries, insurance repositories.
IRDA proposed that these the two committees will identify various opportunities of e-commerce in insurance sector, recommends technological solutions for problems in the field of e-commerce, make suggestion on the regulatory and other facilitation measures for the growth of e-commerce and synergies its activities with Digital India which is an initiative of the Government of India.
