The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has allowed the sale of indemnity-based health insurance products through Point of Sale persons (PoS). As per a circular (read it here) issued by Irdai on 25 October, the PoS will now be allowed to sell these insurance products to individuals but only up to a sum assured limit of Rs5 lakh. The PoS cannot sell group policies. And, the regulator has capped the number of such PoS products per insurance company to three.
Point of Sale person in Insurance
To enable the insurance sector in the country to deploy more distributors on the ground, in 2015 Irdai allowed for a new type of distributors called the point of sale persons, commonly called PoS. To get such distributors on board easily and quickly, the regulator has kept their qualifications simple: education till at least Class 10 and above 18 years of age.
As per the regulator, products such as motor insurance, travel insurance and personal accident insurance require very little underwriting as they are based on information provided by the prospect, or consumer. Also, now such insurance policies are automatically generated by the system. Therefore, the intervention required for such products is minimal and the training and qualification exams for such persons could be of a lesser degree than that for a full-fledged distributor.
