Bima Sugam to Go Live by November, IRDAI Chairman Ajay Seth Confirms
Bima Sugam is moving closer to its November launch as IRDAI Chairman Ajay Seth confirms the timeline.
Bima Sugam is set to go live by November, IRDAI Chairman Ajay Seth has confirmed.
Bima Sugam: Bima Sugam, India’s long-awaited common insurance marketplace, will go live by November, IRDAI Chairman Ajay Seth has confirmed. The update comes days after IRDAI’s proposed changes to insurance commission norms wiped out more than Rs 1 lakh crore in combined market capitalisation across 12 financial stocks in a single intraday session. Bima Sugam platform will let consumers compare and buy policies from multiple insurers through a single, common interface, ending years of delay since the concept was first proposed in 2022.
Seth described Bima Sugam as a customer-facing market infrastructure institution and said it has the potential to transform insurance distribution in India the way the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transformed retail payments.
Bima Sugam: A concept that has taken four years to reach the market
Bima Sugam was first proposed in 2022 as a common electronic platform where policyholders could buy, service, and settle claims on insurance products from any participating insurer without going through a single company’s individual channels. The project has missed several earlier timelines.
Business Standard reported in late 2025 that Bima Sugam’s Phase I, covering e-KYC and an initial set of products, was expected to launch in December after slipping from earlier target dates. The Insurance Reporter reported in July that Seth had pointed to a launch of the platform’s first products — motor, health and term insurance — by the end of September 2026 as insurers completed technical integration with the marketplace. IRDAI now expects the platform to go live by November, according to Seth’s remarks to Moneycontrol.
Insurers have faced difficulty aligning older, legacy technology systems with the unified infrastructure the marketplace requires, according to industry reporting on the rollout.
Bima Sugam: Seth draws parallel to UPI, says platform will run on a not-for-profit basis
Seth said Bima Sugam will operate on a not-for-profit, nominal-fee basis and will provide every insurer with a presence on a common platform, removing the fragmentation of having to shop across separate company websites and apps. He said this structure is intended to shift competition among insurers toward product quality and value rather than the commissions paid to distributors, which have traditionally driven sales through agents and other intermediaries.
Seth said the launch forms part of IRDAI’s broader push to expand digitalisation in insurance distribution and servicing, an area he said has lagged behind the progress made in banking, mutual funds and capital markets.
Bima Sugam: Public Insurance Registry to anchor a shared data layer, rollout to be phased
Seth said the Public Insurance Registry (PIR) will provide a common data layer underpinning the marketplace. He said the PIR is intended to support multiple customer-facing platforms rather than function as the sole point of access, and that it will be rolled out in phases, beginning with high-value use cases.
IRDAI has previously positioned Bima Sugam alongside Bima Vistaar, a rural-focused composite insurance cover, and Bima Vahaak, a women-led agent network built to distribute Bima Vistaar policies through the Sugam platform, as part of what the regulator has called the “Bima Trinity.”
