The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has put health insurers on a deadline to standardize exclusions, diseases or medical conditions that are not covered under a policy. According to an Irdai circular, issued on 27 September, insurers filing new products will have to comply with the guidelines—the draft was released in May 2019—with immediate effect. For existing products, Irdai has given insurers time till 1 October 2020. “Previously, there was no transparency about the claims that could be rejected. However, the regulator has now pre-defined all diseases against which claims can be rejected," said Indraneel Chatterjee, co-founder and principal officer, RenewBuy.com, a digital insurance company.

A broad-based outlook of the Indian insurance sector reveals two fundamental trends. First, the traditional prominence of insurance agents, who play the vital role of handholding consumers throughout their policy life-cycle. Second, the all-pervading impact of digitalization as a market force that is reshaping how consumers engage with the sector and their insurance policies.

Breaking traffic rules may affect your motor insurance premiums. Once this rule comes into effect, even the smallest of violations could affect the premiums. Soon you won’t just get away by paying a fine when you violate a traffic rule; it will also have a bearing on your motor insurance premium. About a week after the government implemented the Motor Vehicles Act, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) formed a nine-member working committee to examine linking premiums with traffic violations.

If you receive a message ‘Now you can be fined Rs 2,000 and/or put in jail for up to 3 months for driving an uninsured vehicle. Get insured now!’ on your mobile phone, don’t get surprised or assume that it is from traffic police or law enforcement agencies. Digital insurance platforms or online insurance service providers are sending these types of messages and mailers to potential customers. According to industry estimates, around 75-80% of two-wheelers (nearly 1 crore) and 15-20% of four-wheelers are uninsured in Punjab and Haryana, despite motor insurance being mandatory under the law. With the implementation of Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, the digital insurance providers have added more thrust to marketing by communicating to existing and potential customers in the region through different mediums such as SMSes/mailers, digital contents and blogs on road safety issues.

RenewBuy, a digital insurance broker, wants to ramp up its multi-company digital agency force to two lakh over the next three years, said its Chief Executive Officer Balachander Sekhar. This insurance-tech company now has 27,000 agents in 450 cities. Sekhar told BusinessLine here that the company intends to cover 1,000 cities with digital agency force of about one lakh in two to three years. RenewBuy has an unique business model that is based on multi-company agency force using ‘point of sale’ terminals and is challenging the entire single company-tied agency model.

Insurance broking firm RenewBuy is targeting a premium of Rs 800 crore in FY20. The digital insurance platform that specializes in motor insurance apart from products like health, has recently raised Rs 130 crore of Series B funding and wrote Rs 300 crore business in FY19.

According to an annual report by insurance regulator IRDAI, insurance penetration in India is one of the lowest at 3.69 percent. Even after 19 years of privatisation, the industry has not reached its full potential. And despite many companies going digital in India, customers still prefer brokers and agents to buy insurance. With a vision to solve the under penetration in the insurance sector, Indraneel Chatterjee and Balachander Sekhar started RenewBuy in 2015 in Gurugram. It is an online insurance aggregator, which is backed by a proprietary technology platform through which an agent can offer insurance products to customers.

According to an annual report by insurance regulator IRDAI, insurance penetration in India is one of the lowest at 3.69 percent. Even after 19 years of privatisation, the industry has not reached its full potential. And despite many companies going digital in India, customers still prefer brokers and agents to buy insurance. With a vision to solve the under penetration in the insurance sector, Indraneel Chatterjee and Balachander Sekhar started RenewBuy in 2015 in Gurugram. It is an online insurance aggregator, which is backed by a proprietary technology platform through which an agent can offer insurance products to customers. The founders say it works as a digital agent model, which provides transparency and offers instant insurance for lower prices.

Digital insurance platform RenewBuy.com has raised Rs 130 crore ($19 million) in Series B round of funding led by Lok Capital, IIFL AMC. RenewBuy’s existing investor Amicus Capital also participated in the current round.

Balachander Sekhar, CEO, RenewBuy.com, said the new round of funding will enable the company to accelerate its entry into newer geographies and augment its product portfolio. Insurance platform RenewBuy has raised $19 million in its series B funding round that was led by Lok Capital and IIFL Wealth. Existing investor Amicus Capital also took part in the current round. According to a press statement, the company has on-boarded more than 25,000 POS partners and insured more than 1 million customers across 450 cities since its inception. RenewBuy has now ventured into health insurance and life insurance. With the launch of TravAssured, a travel concierge service, the firm is offering travel insurance along with other travel products and services.