With new faultlines developing in the insurance landscape, you need to watch your step even while maintaining a determination to succeed as the going gets tougher, says K Nitya Kalyani.

A look at the industry through the eyes of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority’s Annual Report 2010-11.

With competition becoming a fact of life in the industry, insurance companies began to wake up to the urgent need to have a strong agency force on the ground. And they knew agents would be easier on their pockets, says K Nitya Kalyani in this latest instalment of her series.

Insurance liberalisation was aimed at creating competition for the benefit of the customer. Part of the reforms process in the industry was the creation of multiple sales channels so that the customer has choice not only of insurers but also of the mode by which he buys insurance.
In this new Cover Story series, Inside Insurance, started three months ago, we will see how each channel has developed in the first decade of the new-look insurance industry. This month we take a look at the business performance of each channel in the financial year 2009-10 and earlier.
K. Nitya Kalyani discovers how different sales channels have grown in tandem and how the market has grown from a single-channel, agent-oriented market to a multi-channel market where the pie has grown bigger for all.

While bancassurance has boosted sales of policies, too often there is much conflict of interest raising questions about what it should truly do and not do. Worse, there is the overarching question of who ‘owns’ the customer! K Nitya Kalyani introduces in this issue the insurance sales channel of bancassurance that will be elaborated on in the issues to come.

The insurance broker, known more worldwide as a specialised advisor in General insurance, has come into the larger insurance business playground only in the past 10 years in India.
In the cover story series, K Nitya Kalyani looks at the origins and development of this relatively new breed of intermediary and the trials and challenges that the profession has faced in the past few years and is yet facing now.

Is today an age of opportunity or threat for the Indian insurance agent? Mr Rajesh Krishnamoorthy, Managing Director, iFAST Financial India Pvt. Ltd., writes this guest column on how it is both, and on who will win at the end of the day.

Indian insurance intermediaries have many faults to point about each other. Agents tell me that bancassurance is taking away their business and leave policyholders in the lurch when it comes to servicing policies and while getting claims Brokers tell me that the insurance companies themselves are undercutting them on the premium rate quote and stealing [...]

Experts Views on the direction in which insurance intermediation is headed