How Agentic AI could help insurers reach more Indians by 2047

India’s insurance sector collected ₹11.93 lakh crore in premiums and issued 41.84 crore policies in FY2024–25. As per the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) Annual Report 2024-2025, insurance penetration was 3.7% of GDP, including 2.7% for life insurance and 1% for non-life insurance.

These figures highlight the limited scale of the industry and the opportunity to extend financial protection to more people. Doing so will require insurers to reach customers efficiently, keep premiums low, process applications faster and maintain service across the life of a policy. Agentic AI could help perform tasks across these workflows under defined instructions and controls.

On Mint’s series All About AI, moderator Abhishek Singh, Associate Editor at LiveMint spoke with Arun Kumar Parameswaran, EVP and MD of Salesforce South Asia; Amneet Singh, Partner - Advisory and Leader, Business Transformation at PwC; and Sankaranarayanan Raghavan, Chief Technology and Digital Officer at IndiaFirst Life. The discussion examined how insurers could use agentic AI and determine where autonomous decision-making makes business sense.

Giving Insurance Agents More Time With Customers

India's insurance industry relies heavily on distribution networks. Equipping large numbers of agents with technology while keeping costs manageable has been a longstanding challenge.

Parameswaran said that, in emerging economies such as India, human labour can still cost less than AI. Insurers therefore need to identify where the technology delivers enough value to justify its cost. He sees agentic AI as a way to extend technology to tens or hundreds of thousands of agents more economically.

From Routine Requests to Underwriting Decisions

What IndiaFirst Life Is Connecting

IndiaFirst Life has built a connected workflow spanning sales leads, underwriting, servicing, claims and customer feedback. Raghavan said this foundation helps the company identify where AI agents can be introduced.

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