Life insurers should simplify products, extend rural reach: Irdai's Swaminathan Iyer

Mumbai: India's life insurance industry should simplify products and push deeper into rural markets if it wants to meet the country's ambition of achieving insurance for all by 2047, Irdai member (life) Swaminathan S Iyer said Tuesday, calling product complexity a key barrier to adoption.

"With growing consumerism, what can we do today to ensure that 30 years down the line, when they retire, they have adequate corpus in hand? That's the challenge that we all have," Iyer said, speaking at the CII Financing Summit in Mumbai. "Products in the industry have to be as simple as someone going and buying a parlour [biscuit] at the store. It has to be an off-the-shelf product."

He warned that despite 25 years of liberalisation, insurance remains concentrated in cities. "Eighty-five percent of the business comes from urban areas. Almost 80% of the branches are opened in tier 1, 2, 3 cities. We can't really reach insurance for all by only focusing on these areas," he said.