Introduction: India’s Insurance Sector Is Getting a Complete Makeover
Part 1: The Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Act, 2025
What Is It?
“Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha” translates to “Insurance for All, Protection for All” — and the name reflects the ambition behind this legislation. Passed by both Houses of Parliament on December 18, 2025, and given Presidential assent on December 20, 2025, this Act amends three foundational laws of India’s insurance ecosystem:
The Insurance Act, 1938
The Life Insurance Corporation Act, 1956
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 1999
The Act came into force on February 5, 2026, and it has already begun reshaping how the industry operates.
What Has Changed:
1. Perpetual Registration for Intermediaries — The End of the 3-Year Renewal Cycle
Previously, insurance agents and intermediaries had to renew their licences every three years. This periodic renewal system created predictable compliance windows but didn’t ensure that someone who passed a background check in year one remained clean through years two and three.
Under Section 42D of the amended Insurance Act, fixed-term licences are replaced with perpetual (lifetime) registrations, subject to annual fee payments and ongoing compliance requirements.
What this means in plain language: An agent no longer has a licence that “expires” after three years. Instead, they remain registered indefinitely — but they must stay compliant year after year. This shifts the burden from a one-time check at renewal to a continuous compliance obligation.
IRDAI has moved from a renewal-based model to an annual fee-based perpetual registration regime. The three-year checkpoint is gone; continuous compliance is now the baseline.
2. Composite Licence and New Business Models
The Act expands who can operate as an insurance intermediary by widening the definition to include Managing General Agents (MGAs) — a business model common in global insurance markets where a specialised company underwrites policies and manages claims on behalf of an insurer.
This opens the door for new types of players to enter India’s insurance market, bringing global underwriting expertise and technology-driven distribution models.
3. 100% FDI in Insurance Companies
One of the most talked-about provisions is the increase in the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) limit from 74% to 100% in Indian insurance companies. This means a foreign company can now own an Indian insurance company outright.
The practical impact: more foreign capital, global best practices, and advanced technology entering the Indian market — all of which accelerate the push for digitisation and rigorous compliance standards.
4. Stronger IRDAI Powers
The Act gives IRDAI new powers including disgorgement (the ability to claw back ill-gotten gains from violators), more streamlined rule-making processes, and a clearer framework for mergers, demergers, and acquisitions in the sector.
Why This Matters for Compliance Teams
The shift from renewal-based to perpetual registration changes compliance from an episodic activity to an ongoing one. A background check done at the time of agent onboarding is no longer sufficient. Compliance teams must now maintain real-time visibility into whether their agents, sub-agents, and intermediaries remain eligible throughout their tenure.
Consider the risk: a registered agent who develops a financial default, faces a criminal charge, or loses a professional certification after onboarding does not automatically lose their registration under the old system. Under the new perpetual regime, they remain registered — unless someone is actively monitoring for such changes.
This is precisely where continuous monitoring and periodic re-verification becomes a regulatory and risk imperative rather than just a best practice.
Part 2: IRDAI (Bima Sugam — Insurance Electronic Marketplace) Regulations, 2024
What Is Bima Sugam?
Bima Sugam is India’s new Digital Public Infrastructure for insurance — think of it as the UPI of the insurance world. Just as Unified Payments Interface (UPI) made digital payments seamless and universal, Bima Sugam is designed to make buying, selling, renewing, and managing insurance policies as easy as using an app.
Notified by IRDAI on March 21, 2024, and governed by the IRDAI (Bima Sugam — Insurance Electronic Marketplace) Regulations, 2024, the platform is operated by the Bima Sugam India Federation (BSIF), a not-for-profit entity incorporated under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.
Phase 1 of Bima Sugam went live in December 2025, beginning with e-KYC capabilities and select insurance products.
What Does Bima Sugam Do?
At its core, Bima Sugam is a one-stop platform where:
Customers can compare and purchase all types of insurance (life, health, motor, property, travel, agriculture)
Agents and intermediaries can onboard customers digitally
Policies can be issued, serviced, and claims can be settled — entirely online
Every policyholder receives a Bima Pehchaan ID — a unique digital identity linked to Aadhaar/PAN that serves as permanent, portable KYC across all insurance transactions
The platform is built on India Stack APIs, integrating Aadhaar-based e-KYC, PAN verification, consent-based data sharing, and digital payment rails. It is certified under ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 27017:2015 and is compliant with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023.
What Has Changed for Agents and Insurers?
Insurers are required to list their products on Bima Sugam and make all policy services — including claims and grievance redressal — available through the platform. For agents and intermediaries, this means they must be digitally integrated and validated to operate on this marketplace.
This creates a new class of compliance requirement: real-time digital identity validation. In order to onboard an agent onto Bima Sugam, an insurer or intermediary must verify:
Aadhaar-based identity (with liveness detection)
PAN or other identity documents via OCR
Compliance with IRDAI registration and Fit & Proper criteria
Given that Bima Sugam processes sensitive financial and health data for millions of policyholders, the platform demands that every participant in the ecosystem — from insurer to agent to aggregator — meets a verifiable compliance standard before they can transact.
The Technology Implication
Traditional paper-based or manually-processed agent onboarding workflows are incompatible with Bima Sugam. To operate on this marketplace, insurers need API-based RegTech solutions capable of:
Video KYC with liveness checks
Aadhaar-based e-KYC for instant identity verification
PAN and document OCR for fast, accurate data extraction
Real-time database lookups to validate agent credentials with IRDAI records
The shift to digital-first distribution is permanent. Bima Sugam is not an option — it is the infrastructure through which India’s insurance market will increasingly operate.
Part 3: Fit & Proper Criteria — IRDAI Corporate Governance & Intermediaries Regulations, 2024
What Are “Fit & Proper” Requirements?
Every regulated industry has some version of a “Fit & Proper” standard — a set of criteria that key individuals (directors, principal officers, and other decision-makers) must meet to be considered suitable for their roles. In insurance, this matters enormously because agents and intermediaries handle public funds, make representations about risk, and can cause significant consumer harm if they operate unethically.
Under the IRDAI Master Circular on Corporate Governance for Insurers, 2024, the Fit & Proper criteria have been significantly strengthened and made more specific. Similar requirements apply to intermediaries under the IRDAI (Insurance Intermediaries) Regulations.
What Must Be Verified?
For principal officers, directors, and corporate agents, the regulations require verification across multiple dimensions:
Criminal Record Checks
An individual is disqualified if they have been convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude, fraud, or financial dishonesty. This requires a jurisdictional court record verification (CCRV) — checking court databases across the relevant states and districts where the individual has lived and worked.
Financial Integrity Checks
Disqualifications include having been declared insolvent, defaulting on loan repayments, or being barred by any financial sector regulator. This translates to the need for CIBIL score checks, RBI defaulter list checks, SEBI debarment checks, and similar financial background lookups.
Professional Certification and Training Verification
Before an agent can sell insurance, they must complete a prescribed number of training hours. The 2024 regulations specify mandatory training of 25 to 50 hours depending on the category of licence, along with examinations conducted through IRDAI-approved institutions. Compliance teams must be able to verify that these training requirements have been genuinely fulfilled — not just self-declared.
Education and Qualification Verification
For senior roles, educational credentials must be independently verified to ensure candidates meet the minimum qualification standards set by IRDAI.
What Has Changed?
Before the 2024 regulations, Fit & Proper checks were largely conducted at the point of appointment and left to the discretion of individual insurers. The new framework:
Makes the criteria explicit and standardised across the industry
Requires insurers and intermediaries to document their screening process and make it auditable
Extends the obligation to include not just employees but directors and key management personnel of corporate agents
In practical terms, a compliance officer can no longer rely on a self-declaration form. Verification must be supported by independent, documented evidence from credible sources — which is precisely the gap that purpose-built leadership and intermediary screening tools like AuthLead are designed to fill
Part 4: What These Regulations Mean Together — The Big Picture
Reading these three regulatory developments together, a clear direction emerges:
India’s insurance sector is moving from periodic, paper-based compliance to continuous, digital, evidence-based compliance.
The Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha Act replaces episodic licence renewals with perpetual registration — meaning compliance must be maintained and monitored every day, not just at renewal time.
Bima Sugam requires digital integration and real-time identity validation for every agent and intermediary who participates in the marketplace.
The Fit & Proper criteria codify what must be verified, for whom, and through what kind of evidence.
Together, they create an environment where one-time onboarding checks are no longer adequate. Insurers who rely on a background check done at the time of agent recruitment — and never revisit it — are now exposed to significant regulatory and reputational risk
Part 5: How Continuous Verification Addresses the New Compliance Reality
Part 5: How Continuous Verification Addresses the New Compliance Reality
From Pre-Employment Screening to Continuous Monitoring
The traditional background verification model is built around a hiring event. A candidate applies, a BGV is conducted, and if it clears, the person is onboarded. After that, the file is closed.
This model made sense when licences expired and renewal was the compliance trigger. But under perpetual registration, the compliance trigger is every day.
Consider the lifecycle of an insurance agent under the new regime:
Day 1: Agent is onboarded. Aadhaar KYC, PAN verification, criminal record check, CIBIL check, and training certificate validation are all completed.
Year 1: Agent operates without incident. No flags.
Year 2: Agent defaults on a business loan. Their name appears on a financial defaulters list.
Year 3: Agent files a case in a local court, or becomes subject to a regulatory inquiry.
Under the old system, none of this would be caught until the next renewal cycle. Under perpetual registration with no mandatory re-verification trigger, it could go undetected indefinitely — unless the insurer has a system actively monitoring for such changes.
What Continuous Verification Looks Like in Practice
Periodic Criminal/Financial Screening: Rather than a one-time check, agents are screened against criminal record databases and financial defaulter lists on a regular schedule — quarterly, semi-annually, or annually based on risk category.
Re-KYC and Identity Refresh: Aadhaar and PAN-linked identity checks are refreshed periodically, ensuring that the digital identity on file remains valid and that the person remains who they claim to be. Secure storage and audit-ready retrieval of these re-verification records is critical — a capability that platforms like AuthBridge Vault are built to provide.
Training and Certification Monitoring: As IRDAI mandates ongoing training hours and periodic re-examination for certain licence categories, compliance systems must track whether agents are keeping their certifications current.
Regulatory Debarment Monitoring: Agents and key personnel are monitored against IRDAI, SEBI, RBI, and other regulatory debarment lists in real time, so that any action by another regulator is immediately flagged.
AuthLead, Continuous Monitoring, and Re-KYC: Solutions Built for This Regulatory Moment
This is where purpose-built compliance technology becomes critical. Tools like continuous BGV platforms, Re-KYC solutions, and regulatory watchlist monitoring are no longer optional features for ambitious compliance teams — they are the infrastructure required to meet the obligations created by perpetual registration and the Fit & Proper framework.
Specifically, an end-to-end compliance solution for the new IRDAI regime should offer:
For Bima Sugam Readiness:
Aadhaar-based Video KYC with liveness detection
PAN and document OCR for instant data extraction
API-based integration with insurer and aggregator platforms for seamless onboarding
For Fit & Proper Compliance:
Court record verification (CCRV) covering jurisdictions across India
CIBIL and financial default checks
Education and professional certification verification, including training hours under IRDAI mandates
Regulatory debarment and watchlist screening (IRDAI, RBI, SEBI, CIBIL)
For principal officers and directors, AuthLead offers a structured leadership verification framework that maps directly to IRDAI’s Fit & Proper requirements
For Perpetual Registration Monitoring:
Scheduled periodic re-verification of criminal records and financial standing
Real-time alerts when an agent appears on a defaulter or debarment list
Automated compliance dashboards tracking the status of every agent in the network
Audit trails that demonstrate ongoing compliance to IRDAI inspectors
For Re-KYC Under Bima Sugam:
Periodic digital identity refresh linked to Bima Pehchaan ID
Consent-based re-verification workflows that are frictionless for the agent
Integration with India Stack APIs for instant, verified updates
Encrypted, audit-ready storage of all verification records via AuthBridge Vault
