By Supriya Rathi – Wholetime Director, Anand Rathi Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd.
As per the latest Swiss Re, total insurance penetration in India is 4.2%. To put this in perspective, the world average of insurance penetration is 7.3%. In developed countries such as UK, it is 11% and USA at 12%. In this metric we are far currently far behind even regional counterparts, such as Malaysia and Thailand.
Penetration in the life insurance industry in India is at 3.2%, at par with the global average of 3.3%. For the non-life sectors the figure is very low at just 1 percent as against the global average of 4%.
The Development Role of the Regulator
Insurance as a sector is seminal to the growth of the overall economy. IRDAI’s clear mandate for the non-life insurance industry is to increase the general insurance penetration to 2.5% by FY27 from the current 1%. To this end, the regulator is proposing widening the scope of distribution channels, ease in new product filing and adoption of technology across the value chain; all of these recent initiatives are a welcome move towards the IRDAI’s target of insurance for all by 2047.
Insurance Awareness and education
The awareness about Insurance continues to be very low in India. All stakeholders, insurers, regulator, intermediaries need to drive awareness through various initiatives such as digital marketing and traditional media channels. AMFI, the mutual fund regulator ran a successful campaign : Mutual Fund Sahi Ha, which helped…
