Agents, premium and persistency in numbers

Individual agents still carry life insurance in India. In 2024-25, they brought in 49.44% of individual new business premium. The figure comes from the IRDAI Annual Report 2024-25. It was 50.90% a year earlier. For the public sector insurer, agents brought in 93.86%. For private insurers, the share was 22.80%.

The agent force is large and it turns over fast. On 31 March 2024, India had 28.95 lakh individual agents. In 2023-24, insurers appointed 9.75 lakh agents. They terminated 6.98 lakh.

Persistency is where quality shows. Three large private life insurers reported 13th-month persistency for April to June 2025. It ranged from 82% to 86%. A year earlier, the same three ranged from 85% to 89.7%. Business Standard reported that industry persistency had dipped.

Sources: IRDAI Annual Report 2024-25, reported by Outlook Money, 1 January 2026, share of individual new business premium by channel · IRDAI Annual Report, reported by Deccan Chronicle, 2 March 2025, agent counts for 2023-24 · Business Standard, 1 August 2025, insurer-reported persistency for three private life insurers · persistency figures are insurer-level and not an industry average

Agents bring in half of individual life premium, and lapses undo sales.

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What lifts an agent's payout this month

An agent's month holds several possible moves. Each one pays differently. Each one carries a different quality risk.

The IRDAI (Payment of Commission) Regulations, 2023 took effect in April 2023. Insurers now set commission through a board-approved policy. Payments must stay within the expenses of management limit. Rewards and incentives count as commission. So plan design varies by insurer. The moves below are common to many plans.

Renewals can lift the payout as much as a new sale. They also protect persistency. An agent who cannot see this chases new premium. Lapses then follow at month 13.

We cover the plan side in how insurance agent commission software works.

Sources: IRDAI (Payment of Commission) Regulations, 2023, notified 26 March 2023, effective 1 April 2023 · the table is illustrative, and commission rates and gates vary by insurer and product

The move that pays this month is often a renewal that also protects persistency.

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What a next best action sales rep screen shows

The screen shows one move at a time. It ranks moves by rupee lift. It weighs how likely the agent is to complete each. It drops any move that fails a suitability rule.

A good ranking follows three rules.

1. Rupees first. Each move shows its effect on this month's payout.
2. Quality inside the rank. Renewals and persistency gates rank ahead of risky new premium.
3. One move at a time. The agent sees the next move. The rest wait.

The third rule has evidence behind it. Xueming Luo and co-authors ran three field experiments with fintech sales agents. An AI coach gave agents feedback on their calls. Under it, middle-ranked agents improved more than others. Bottom-ranked agents suffered information overload. When their feedback was restricted, their performance improved substantially.

A fourth result matters to managers. Agents did better when a human manager relayed the AI feedback. That beat the AI alone and the manager alone.

Source: Luo, Qin, Fang and Qu, Artificial Intelligence Coaches for Sales Agents: Caveats and Solutions, Journal of Marketing, 2021 · three randomized field experiments with two fintech companies, 429, 100 and 451 agents · press release from the American Marketing Association, 19 November 2020 · the coach analyzed calls and did not rank payout moves

One suitable move in rupees, relayed by the manager, beats a long list.

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Quality comes first in the ranking

IRDAI is moving distribution economics toward quality. On 23 September 2026, it released a consultation paper. Its title is Recalibrating Economics of Insurance Distribution. Comments closed on 25 October 2026. Everything below is a proposal.

The paper proposes commission limits by product and channel. Take long-term life policies. There, agents would get up to 25% in the first year. Renewals would pay 5%. The paper also proposes clawback of commission on mis-sold policies. A salesperson's mis-selling record could be published. Volume-linked incentives for bank and NBFC staff selling insurance would be prohibited.

For a next-action ranking, the meaning is plain. A sale that may be clawed back has a lower expected payout. A renewal that holds has a higher one. The ranking should price both.

Bank channels face the sharper change. Our note on bancassurance incentive management covers plan design for bank staff.

Sources: Free Press Journal, analysis of the IRDAI consultation paper released 23 September 2026, commission limits for long-term life · MediaNama, 30 September 2026, clawback and disclosure proposals · all items are proposals open to change after consultation

If clawback holds, ignoring suitability will cost the agent money.

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How Kennect helps agents act on the next move

In the insurance teams we work with, payouts arrive after the month. By then, the renewal has lapsed. We show the next move while it still pays.

The personal cockpit. Each agent sees earnings to date and slab progress. Persistency shows against each gate. A what-if simulator shows what one more renewal or sale earns.

AI-powered nudges. Our AI-powered nudges flag a renewal due or a slab within reach. They also flag a persistency gate at risk. Each nudge shows the rupee effect. The same logic works for AI nudges for sales reps in pharma.

For the manager. Managers see which agents sit near a slab or a gate. That list shapes the week's coaching, as the Luo study suggests.

Clawbacks handled cleanly. A lapse or cancellation runs through recompute and carry-forward. Every change sits in the audit trail.

In a mid-sized Indian pharma deployment, payout queries fell 80%. That happened once reps could see how each payout was built. In a pharma deployment, medical representatives who used the app 25+ days a month had 17.4% higher attainment. That is a correlation from an uncontrolled comparison.

Source: Kennect claim register · 80% fewer payout queries, mid-sized Indian pharma deployment, 1,000+ medical representatives · attainment 106.8% to 125.4% for medical representatives active 25+ days a month in a pharma deployment, a correlation from an uncontrolled comparison · neither deployment is in insurance

An agent who sees the next move in rupees acts before month 13.

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What this means for the January to March quarter

The fourth quarter of the financial year starts on 1 January 2027. Annual targets close on 31 March. The pressure to sell rises with them.

Set the next-action rules before then. Rank renewals and persistency gates first. Add suitability checks to every new-sale prompt. Model the clawback proposal now. Then read the return by agent band. Our guide to return on incentives paid uses the gap to the next slab in rupees.

Next-action rules set before 1 January protect persistency in the fourth quarter.

Read more on incentive compensation management, and how Kennect works for insurance.

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