An Insurance Marketing firm is an insurance entity – an intermediary – that can sell the insurance products or multiple insurance company. Due to its nomenclature, most get confused about the functions it performs. Thus, in this article, we are going to take a deep dive into the meaning of an IMF and go deeper into the services that it provides.
What is an Insurance Marketing Firm?
An Insurance marketing firm is an intermediary that after partnering up with up to 2 insurance companies – 2 life, 2 general or 2 health insurance – can sell their insurance policies and market their services.
To operate as an insurance marketing firm, the applicant, which can either be a company, an LLP or an cooperative society, must obtain the certificate of registration from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India.
Why there is confusion about the functions that an Insurance Marketing Firm performs?
When it comes to Insurance Intermediaries, different types of them performs the same function. However, one word that sets the IMF apart from the rest is the term “marketing”.
Most face dilemma when seeing this term – believing that it’s that marketing insurance policies, an act that is not permitted to insurance intermediaries such as insurance web aggregators – is the primary task of an Insurance Marketing firm.
However, when we started to analyze the IRDA regulations specific to the IMF, we realized that the functions that it performs encompass a wide range of tasks, only small part of which is marketing. In this article, we are going to focus specifically on those functions.
Solicitation of Insurance Products – The primary task of an Insurance Marketing Firm
Solicitation of Insurance product by an Insurance Marketing firm involves first partnering up with insurance companies. An Insurance marketing firm is only allowed to partner up with up to 2 insurance companies. Furthermore, those companies must only partake in selling one type of insurance policy.
For instance, one IMF can join up with at most 2 life insurance companies or 2 health or 2 general insurance companies. Once partnered, the IMF performs that task similar to an insurance broker, that is selling these insurance policies to customers. Related Content: Insurance Self Network Platform
Insurance servicing activities: Performing all the tasks related to insurance services
There are certain services within the insurance domain that the insurance companies outsource because of the lack of resources on their end. An Insurance Marketing Firm in India takes the charge and provides these services:
- Back office activities: There are certain back office activities within the insurance companies such as indemnity calculation, terms specifications, billing and invoicing that one can outsource to the Insurance Marketing Firms.
- Agent for Insurance Repositories: Ever since 2013, the insurance policies have become paperless. Insurance repositories are digital storage units that hold the insurance policies in their electronic form. Insurance marketing firm can become a person approved to access these units and provide services associated with it.
- Surveying and Loss assessment: A surveyor and loss assessor are service providers that assist insurance companies in surveying the insurance claims and assessing the loss that can be covered by the indemnity. It’s a service that an Insurance Marketing Firm can provide.
Using Financial Service Executive to Market certain financial products
An FSE, Financial Service Executive is an expert that IMF can employ to market financial products as per the IRDA guidelines for an Insurance Marketing firms. These products include:
- Pension products of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority
- Mutual Funds and other financial products of Securities and Exchange Board of India
- banking and Financial products of Reserve Bank of India
- and non-financial products of Department of Posts.
Conclusion
An Insurance Marketing Firm is an IRDA-authorized insurance intermediary that can perform the tasks of other intermediaries. The marketing aspect of this entity is specific to financial products of specific organizations. To know more, contact Registrationwala.
In this article, you’ll finally know about the Insurance Marketing firm and the functions it performs. Read to understand the inner nuances of an insurance marketing firm.
