MASTER MIND FINNASSET: Maintain Persistency or lose license: IRDA to Agents

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Maintain Persistency or lose license: IRDA to Agents

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has introduced a new regulatory norm for life insurance agents wherein they (agents) face the risk of losing their licenses if half their policies sold lapse within three years.

Life insurance agents will now have to ensure that 50% of the policies they sell till March 2014 do not lapse, beyond which they will have to maintain a persistency of 75% for the remaining policies, according to the new norm. From July 2011, all agents will have to adhere to the new persistency norm.

Moreover, in order to move one step forward and be vigilant, IRDA has also directed that employees of insurance companies cannot engage their relatives as agents in the same insurance company. However, as a relief agents would be eligible to take over orphan policies and be entitled to receive 50% of the deferred commission, which the original agent was eligible for. A policy becomes orphaned when its original agent quits the company and is not serviced by anyone.

Insurance agents, in order to earn high commissions sell various insurance policies to individuals dangling the carrot of tax benefit. But later policyholders struggle to meet their premium obligations for various reasons - one being mis-selling. This thus has led to an industry average lapse of around 30%, due to which customers lose and companies gain (as the policyholder is not refunded any premiums in most cases). In our opinion the initiative taken by IRDA is a disciplinary one, and it would instill insurance products being promoted in a wise manner to serious customers, and would ensure better service being provided by insurance agents, hopefully.

Persistency Ratio : A ratio which reveals the percentage of policies that continue paying premium over the premium paying term. The higher the ratio the better it is.

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