Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority

I think there, there's an ...

And which is why today the platforms like what, uh, you know, IRDAI chairman, you know, is running through CII platform, and I think I must compliment him that he's ga- finally getting the two sides together on the table, which was a challenge earlier.

And these conversations are starting to happen now.

Uh, you know, that, yes, let's have these conversations.

Right.

So what IRDA is saying is that after five years, right, if at all they find some things like this, because you may forget, you know, one of the case that I remember was for one of my, you know, friends, mom's policy.

Right.

Now, she was admitted for some cancer treatment.

Now, selling shares for cheap and buying them back expensive as a way of paying a distributor more than commission rules allow is not merely theory.

This was IRDAI's conclusion.

The commission cap is IRDAI's rules to enforce, and it found that Max Life and Axis Bank had used the share deals to get around the limits on what an insurer may pay a corporate agent and fined Axis Bank rupees two crore and Max Life rupees three crore.

SEBI itself concluded that this was a regulatory workaround for the insurance commission limits, but that was never in question.

What SEBI brought was a different question.

So IRDAI regulates insurers, but has nothing to say about the rules a publicly listed company has to follow, which is wholly SEBI's territory.

See, Max Financial, which is Max Life's listed parent, is writing the checks to buy shares back at rupees 166, so its public shareholders ultimately fund the arrangement.

But were they told what was happening? And does dressing up compensation as an investment equal defrauding them? In October 2024, SEBI issued a show-cause notice to 25 entities alleging an approximately rupees 3,900 crore loss to Max Financial and a matching gain for the Axis group.

And you'll also see a lot of laws merging towards the principles of privacy.

There'll be a bunch of IRDAI regulations, a bunch of RBI regulations, a bunch of, you know, sectoral regulations.

Everything, in my opinion, is converging towards the fundamental principles of privacy in one way or the other.

Okay, thank you, Kausav.