“Insurance for All by 2047” is achievable, but only if it is pursued as a national mission rather than a market afterthought, according to a report submitted by the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) to the General and Life Insurance Councils and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).
The path forward, the report said, requires regulatory clarity, technological leapfrogging, capital deepening and the building of institutional trust. If executed with discipline and imagination, insurance could emerge as a cornerstone of India’s economic resilience, social security architecture and sustainable growth story.
The study was prepared by Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM Kozhikode; Mridul Saggar, Head of the Centre for Macroeconomics, Banking and Finance; and faculty members Rudra Sensarma and Shubhasis Dey. It examined two fundamental questions: how insurance services can be extended to all sections of society in India and how the insurance industry can adapt to the ongoing process of creative destruction.
However, the IIMK team emphasized that achieving the goal of “Insurance for All by 2047” will require coordinated action across regulators, insurers, government, technology providers and civil society. With timely reforms, rapid technological adoption and sustained efforts to build institutional trust, the sector has the potential to play a transformative role in safeguarding households, enterprises and the broader economy against emerging risks in the decades ahead.
Despite India being the world’s fourth-largest economy, the report said that insurance penetration remains modest at about 3.7 per cent of GDP, with significant gaps in health, property, catastrophe and small-ticket non-life coverage.
“Insurance for All” should be interpreted as universal access to affordable, appropriate risk protection, irrespective of income, geography or social status. IRDAI should adopt phasing in of a target for a 1+1 coverage – at least one term life policy and one health insurance policy – covering over 60 per cent of the population by 2030, 80 per cent by 2040.
The report also suggested provisions in the forthcoming Union Budget to either divest state-ownership or re-capitalise National Insurance Company, Oriental Insurance Company and United India Insurance which are running negative insolvency ratios.
The report also makes recommendation for massive restructuring India’s insurance sector through M&A activity to fully reap creative destruction potential to benefit from digital technology, different types of AI, ML & deep learning models.
Indian insurance industry is dominated by life segment and within that by Life Insurance Corporation that enjoy a virtual monopoly power. Insurance is not a natural monopoly. There appears to be a prima facie case for splitting (demerger), divestment or divestiture and unbundling of LIC business. The government can engage professional merchant banker advisory services to work out the best way for splitting and unbundling its activities to generating efficient and value creating competitive units. This alone with spur enhanced interests of fresh investments in the sector, adds the report.
Published on January 16, 2026
