Bima Sugam marketplace likely to launch by November: IRDAI

Reports coming in for today mention that India's insurance regulator anticipates Bima Sugam, its long-awaited digital insurance marketplace, to go live by November, with the platform aimed at making insurance purchases easier and more transparent for consumers, chairman Ajay Seth stated.

Bima Sugam is envisaged as a customer-facing market infrastructure institution, while the Public Insurance Registry (PIR) will provide the common information and digital-infrastructure layer supporting the wider insurance ecosystem.

"Bima Sugam is likely to be rolled out by November. The objective is to create a much easier, transparent and neutral customer journey. Bima Sugam is envisaged as a customer-facing market infrastructure institution," Seth told Moneycontrol.

Bima Sugam was first proposed in 2022 with a January 2023 target, and has missed several deadlines since, including an April 2025 and a December 2025 launch window, as insurers worked through technology integration with the platform. The project was conceived as insurance's answer to what UPI did for payments. Today, customers typically buy a policy through whichever agent, bank, or broker they happen to approach, with little easy way to compare products across insurers, and commissions rather than product quality often driving what gets sold. Bima Sugam is meant to fix that fragmentation by giving every insurer a presence on a common platform.

The platform is anticipated to run on a not-for-earnings, nominal-fee basis, so that commissions do not become the main driver of sales. This, Seth stated, should shift competitive pressure among insurers towards the quality and value of their products and services rather than distribution payouts.

"Public insurance registry (PIR) will provide the common data layer. The principle is 'protocols, not platforms'. PIR should backing multiple customer-facing platforms rather than become the only platform," he stated, adding that it would be rolled out in phases, starting with high-value use cases.

Ultimately, Seth stated, the reforms would be judged by their effect on policyholders.

The Bima Sugam rollout is part of IRDAI's effort to change how insurance is bought and serviced. Seth stated digitalisation needs to play a much bigger role in insurance, given how far banking, mutual funds and capital markets have already moved towards digital transactions. At the same time, he stated digitalisation is not intended to eliminate traditional distribution — agents and other intermediaries are anticipated to increasingly adopt digital processes, while easier access to information could make consumers more comfortable buying insurance on their own.