IRDAI on September 1 proposed a Public Insurance Registry as a population-scale, interoperable and non-exclusionary Digital Public Infrastructure for insurance, releasing a consultation paper that sets out what data it will link, who can access it and how privacy will be guarded - and inviting comments by September 30. The proposal, detailed in Business Standard on September 1 (8:15 PM IST) and September 2 (2:53 PM IST), links policy and claims records, intermediary information, grievances, unclaimed amounts and product details, and can connect to external systems including the Central KYC Registry, Aadhaar authentication, VAHAN vehicle registration, health and mortality registries, weather and disaster databases and court case-management systems.
The Architecture: Source-System Primacy, Not a Single Database
The March 2026 PIR concept, now formalised under the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Act, 2025, is explicitly not a central database copying all records. IRDAI says underlying data stays with the institutions that hold it. PIR provides three modes: Reference (lightweight pointer to a record held at source), Governed copy (information needed for a genuine cross-insurer purpose held centrally under defined controls) and Anonymised aggregate (sector-level analysis). Existing records need not be standardised at once. New policies and events would follow PIR standards from an agreed date, with legacy records mapped progressively at renewals or material events. Common definitions for "claim", "grievance", "lapse" and "surrender" plus common identifiers, formats and provenance metadata (source, creation time, version) are required. Identity combines Aadhaar, PAN and CKYC anchors with probabilistic demographic matching where a strong anchor is unavailable, carrying confidence levels and manual review triggers. For governance, the paper proposes converting the Insurance Information Bureau into a not-for-profit company wholly owned by IRDAI to set up PIR under a separate regulatory framework.
What Changes for Policyholders, Agents and Insurers
For policyholders the pitch is a single-window to discover and compare cover, verify licensed insurers and intermediaries, track active policies across multiple carriers, streamline claims and locate forgotten unclaimed amounts - all via consent-based, purpose-limited access that is "specific, informed, revocable and auditable". An insurer could pull your relevant claims history from another insurer only with your consent; detailed documents remain at the source insurer. Intermediaries gain verified data for faster onboarding and suitability checks, which directly ties to IRDAI's parallel tagging rule (every policy must carry salesperson name and ID from January 1, 2027 under the Intermediaries Amendment Regulations 2026). For insurers and reinsurers, standardised exposure and catastrophe sightlines improve underwriting, fraud checks and capital allocation. The paper also notes that commercially sensitive pricing, underwriting rules and product strategies would not be disclosed through cross-industry datasets. As Iffco-Tokio's Amit Jain noted to Business Standard, a trusted framework for information sharing can improve experience and efficiency, but only if safeguards hold. The fraud context is live: the Supreme Court's August 25-26 SIT directions cited the same vehicle appearing in multiple Motor Accident Claims, a pattern the paper's VAHAN and E-Detailed Accident Report link is designed to catch.
Action and Watch-Item: Two Dates That Matter
First, September 30. IRDAI has invited comments on architecture, identity, standards, privacy, consent and transition timelines. Insurers, brokers, TPAs, hospitals, banks and consumer groups are expected to respond, and the final framework will reflect how strongly purpose limitation, data masking, role-based access and audit trails are codified under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, Aadhaar Act 2016 and IT Act 2000. Second, watch how PIR sequencing interacts with Bima Sugam. PIR is described as the data layer for the insurance lifecycle from issuance to grievance and dispute resolution; Bima Sugam India Federation's marketplace (initial motor, health, term products targeted by end-September 2026) is the transaction layer. If PIR mandates are phased before Bima Sugam's APIs are stable, consumers may see paperwork reductions sooner in servicing and claims than in purchase. For now, no new compliance burden falls on retail customers, but when renewing health or life cover after September 2025's 0% GST exemption, keep KYC documents consistent across insurers - Aadhaar, PAN and CKYC alignment will determine how smoothly a future PIR lookup can match your records without manual review.
Sources: Business Standard Sep 1 2026 8:15 PM "Irdai plans public insurance registry to bridge data gaps, widen coverage" and Sep 2 2026 2:53 PM "Irdai's insurance registry: What data will it link and who can access it?" summarising IRDAI consultation paper released Sep 1, 2026 inviting comments by Sep 30; IRDAI proposed IIB conversion to wholly-owned not-for-profit.