Insurance is something most Indians know they should have, yet millions remain uninsured or underinsured. Life insurance penetration in India still lags well behind developed economies, and general insurance penetration remains modest despite rapid digital growth. India has set itself an ambitious target: Insurance for All by 2047, a vision championed by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).
To unpack what it will take to get there, Srajan Agarwal, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, News4Bharat, had an exclusive interaction with Sameer Chibber, an independent consultant specializing in customer experience and enterprise process transformation. Edited excerpts:
Q1. Despite growing awareness, millions of Indians still don't have adequate insurance coverage. Why does insurance remain a low priority for many people, especially beyond the metros?
The primary reason is a lack of understanding of insurance products. That gap exists partly because insurance has traditionally been a push product, sold rather than purchased. Understanding is also lower outside the metros. In rural India, or Bharat, families prioritize food, healthcare and livelihood over protection, because the benefits of insurance are not immediately visible.
Even customers who do buy insurance often do so for tax savings rather than to protect their income and secure their finances. That perception is compounded by limited financial literacy and occasional mis-selling, which has eroded trust.
The third issue is product complexity. If insurance products were as simple to understand as digital payments are today, more people would buy adequate insurance, understand it better, and the industry's reliance on push sales would fade. Customers would start opting in on their own.
Also Read | "Loyalty Isn't Cashback—It's Recognition"; Ayush Jhawar on the Future of Brand Loyalty | Exclusive Interview
Q: The regulator has been pushing the vision of Insurance for All by 2047. From your experience, what will it take to move from simply "insuring India" to truly "insuring Bharat"?
Three shifts need to happen.
- First, products must become simpler, more affordable and relevant to local needs. Rural customers, gig workers, small entrepreneurs and farmers need flexible solutions, not one-size-fits-all products. Right now, if one insurer pushes guaranteed products, others simply follow rather than building something distinct for Bharat, and most of the focus stays on the metros.
- Second, distribution must become hyperlocal. Bancassurance, common service centers, digital platforms and micro-insurance intermediaries all exist, but they remain limited to pockets. Micro-insurers and digital platforms need to be pushed into the hinterland, along with much more education on the value of having insurance.
- Third, customer servicing has to become frictionless. Too often, servicing is built around standard operating procedures rather than human touch. As digital servicing takes over, everything risks becoming a binary yes or no, and the human element gets lost. We need digital servicing that still preserves that human touch. Get these three things right, and Insurance for All by 2047 is achievable.
Q: Insurance fraud has become increasingly sophisticated with the rise of AI and technology. How serious is this challenge today, and what kinds of fraud concern insurers the most?
Fraud has always been part of any financial product, not just insurance, but it has evolved significantly with digitalization. Technology has improved customer convenience, but it has also opened new fraud vectors, especially in life insurance.
The areas of greatest concern include identity fraud at onboarding, synthetic identities created to mask a customer's real identity, document forgery to inflate sum assured, medical underwriting fraud, premium financing fraud, early claims fraud, agent collusion, digital impersonation and phishing, and money laundering through insurance products.
Operationally, fraud management can no longer rely solely on post-event investigation. Earlier, the industry would investigate after a fraud happened and try to recover the money. That model has shifted toward preventive controls. AI is helping here, alongside robust KYC, know-your-customer, anti-money-laundering checks and continuous transaction surveillance. IRDAI has also strengthened governance expectations around fraud risk management, customer due diligence and operational controls. The industry's objective now is early detection rather than post-loss recovery, and it is already moving in that direction.
Q: How are AI and data analytics helping insurers strengthen underwriting and make the process faster and more customer-friendly?
Technology has been a huge boost for underwriting. It used to be a predominantly rule-based process driven by mortality tables. Today, insurers integrate multiple data sources, including medical history, financial information, behavioral indicators and digital footprints, to build far more accurate risk assessments.
This has brought several improvements. Underwriting decisions are faster; over-the-counter products can now go from login to policy issuance in about 10 minutes. Risk segmentation is better and less error-prone than the manual profiling of the past. Manual intervention has dropped sharply, since inbuilt algorithms now handle decisions that once required a senior underwriter's sign-off. Straight-through processing has improved through integrated KYC and AML checks. Operational costs have come down as a result, and fraud detection has been enhanced.
Customers benefit from quicker decisions, simpler documentation and more transparency. Cases used to bounce between sales and underwriting three or four times over missing documentation. Now the customer is told upfront what's required, and the case gets decided within seconds of that being met.
That said, AI should augment underwriters, not replace them. Complex cases still need experienced human judgment, particularly where medical or financial nuances are involved.
Also Read | 100% FDI in Insurance: Can It Truly Bridge India's Protection Gap?
Q: A common concern is that automation and AI could make insurance less personal. How do insurers strike the right balance between digital efficiency and human touch?
This is a genuinely difficult balance. Technology should remove complexity, not human empathy, and insurance, by the nature of what it promises a customer, requires a lot of empathy.
Routine, non-financial transactions such as policy servicing can and should move to technology, and most insurers have already automated that layer. But claims involving critical illness or financial hardship cannot be automated the same way. That is where the human element matters most, and it is the moment when a customer's confidence in the product they bought is either established or broken for generations. Automation should stay out of claim settlements.
The future operating model has to be digital-first, but paired with human empathy. Customers should be able to self-serve when they choose to, while having seamless access to knowledgeable advisors when they need reassurance or complex guidance. The best customer experience combines operational efficiency with emotional intelligence. Any system that strips out the emotional intelligence piece will eventually fail, because it becomes too machine-driven and customers start losing trust in the brand.
Q: Given your background in operations, governance and digital transformation, what do you see as the biggest game-changing technology for life insurance over the next five years?
I'd point to three areas.
The first is frictionless onboarding. A lot of work has already gone into this, with insurtechs investing significant time, money and thought into systems that can genuinely deliver seamless onboarding.
The second is training intermediaries. This matters more than ever, because the old model, where the sale happens and the intermediary disappears, has to go. Insurers need technology that keeps intermediaries reachable and properly equipped with product knowledge, so they can help customers understand what they've bought at each stage of life. A product that suits someone as a student can evolve in features when they marry, and again when they have children, so intermediaries need to know when and how to approach the customer at each stage.
The third, and most important, is the moment of truth: claims payout. Whether it's an early death claim or a maturity payout, the industry has already brought turnaround times down significantly, but there is still room to reduce them further and improve the overall experience. Technology needs to be built around all three legs: onboarding, intermediary enablement, and payout.
Also Read | Why Responsible Interest Rate Regulation Can Strengthen India's Small-Ticket Lending Ecosystem?
Q: As we close, if you had to leave our audience with one message, what should regulators, insurers and customers collectively do to make sure insurance reaches every household across Bharat, not just as a financial product but as a financial necessity?
Insurance is ultimately a social promise, not only a financial product. For insurers, the responsibility is to make insurance simple, transparent and accessible. For the regulator, it's about a continuous focus on customer protection, innovation, financial inclusion and digital infrastructure. And for the customer, insurance should be viewed not as an expense but as an investment in their family's financial resilience.
If all three stakeholders work together, with trust, technology and customer centricity at the core, the vision of Insurance for All by 2047 can become a reality. The true measure of success won't be the number of policies issued, but the number of families whose financial future stays secure because insurance delivered on its promise when they needed it most.
This interview is part of Bharat Dialogues, a News4Bharat series of in-depth conversations with founders, innovators, game-changers and policymakers shaping business in India.
About the author - Sameer Chibber is a senior business and operations executive with over 23 years of leadership experience, including more than 20 years in the life insurance industry, leading large-scale operational transformation, customer experience, policy administration, governance, digital innovation, and enterprise operations who is currently an Independent Consultant on CX and Process Transformation.
