The regulator of the insurance sector, Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has urged insurance firms to offer consumer friendly products and simply their policy documents in order to attract more customers.

“The consumer should be the focus of the Indian insurance industry,” said IRDA Chairman, J. Hari Narayan in his address at the thirteenth insurance summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

He also expressed that the companies in the sector should be consumer-friendly and offer products that will help them if they aim to penetrate deeper into the market. “If we make products simpler and make it easier to understand, it will automatically increase penetration,” he said citing jargonised language used even in simple policy products.

Mr. Narayan expressed that the plain vanilla products should only have policy documents in simple language and the contractual terms and conditions should be comprehensible to laymen so as to attract larger uninsured parts of the society.

He also recommended having different agent licenses for different policies in order to penetrate more into the market as it could lead more professional agents and will halp them sell the polices in an targeted manner.

However, Mr. Narayan pointed out that the complicated products will need to have complicated policy documents.

On telemarketing, he expressed that the system, which required insurance companies to record and keep the conversation with the customer in case customers feels cheated or mislead by the insurer, will create more responsible agents and also keep a check on mis-selling.

Mr. Narayan also recommended outsourcing to companies looking to cut down costs of operations but clarified that there is no directive on the issue. Another way to cut costs is by sharing the market information system, he said.

He also released a report titled, “Indian insurance sector: stepping into the next decade of growth”, which was prepared jointly by CII and E&Y.