March 6, 2015
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (RDAI) also said that the insurance servicing activities of the insurance marketing firms will include undertaking back-office activities of insurers as allowed in the guidelines on outsourcing activities by insurance companies, and becoming approved persons of insurance repositories, reported the Business Standard. They can also undertake survey and loss assessment work by employing licensed surveyors & loss assessors. .
Under these rules, insurance marketing firms can market and service insurance through insurance sales persons, apart from marketing other financial products through financial service executives. These include products of mutual fund companies; pension products of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority; other financial products distributed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India and licensed investment advisors; and banking/ financial products of banks/ non-banking financial companies regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. .
In general insurance, insurance marketing firms can deal with only retail insurance products including motor, health, travel and other similar policies. An insurance marketing firm should have a minimum net worth of INR1 million (US$16,140) . It has to designate a principal officer who shall be the overall in-charge and shall be responsible for regulatory compliance. The licence given to such a firm is renewable every three years.