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IRDAI released a consultation paper on 1 September 2026 proposing a Public Insurance Registry, envisaged as Digital Public Infrastructure for insurance.
The registry is designed as a population-scale, interoperable access layer rather than a centralised database, with records staying at the institutions that hold them.
It is proposed under the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Act, 2025.
The existing Insurance Information Bureau is proposed to be converted into a wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary of IRDAI to run it.
Stakeholders and the public may send feedback until 30 September 2026.
The PIR would not copy every policy record into one government database. Instead, the original institutions - insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries - keep their own records, and the registry maintains only the means to find and verify them: lightweight references, governed copies and anonymised aggregates. Authorised participants then discover, verify and exchange information through common standards and protocols, with access tied to the customer's specific, informed, revocable and auditable consent and limited by purpose and role. The design choice matters because a single consolidated store of every Indian's insurance history would be both a privacy hazard and a single point of failure.
Simple Analogy: It works like a library catalogue rather than a warehouse: the catalogue tells you which shelf holds the book and confirms it exists, but the book itself never leaves its own library.
The statutory regulator for India's insurance sector, responsible for licensing insurers and intermediaries, protecting policyholder interests and regulating conduct, solvency and pricing. It is the anchor regulator for the proposed Public Insurance Registry.
The sector's data repository, which collects and analyses insurance industry data. The consultation paper proposes converting it into a wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary of IRDAI to implement and run the registry.
General Awareness - insurance regulation, IRDAI, digital public infrastructure
GS Paper 3 > Indian Economy - mobilisation of resources, financial sector; GS Paper 2 > statutory regulatory bodies
General Awareness - regulators and financial sector news
Consider the following statements about G-20: 1. The G-20 group was originally established as a platform for the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to discuss the international economic and financial issues. 2. Digital public infrastructure is one of India's G-20 priorities. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: Both 1 and 2
Interoperable, open digital systems that support services at population scale - identity, payments and data exchange being the standard examples.
The ability of different institutions' systems to exchange information through shared standards, without all of them moving to one platform.
An insurer of insurers - a company that takes on part of the risk another insurer has underwritten.
Money due to a policyholder or nominee that remains unpaid, often because the beneficiary does not know the policy exists.
A framework in which any data sharing needs the customer's specific, informed and revocable permission, with every access recorded for audit.