What an Insurance Advisor Can Sell: The Product Handbook

Almost every guide written for new advisors covers how to get certified and then stops. Very little of it explains what you are actually allowed to sell afterwards, how each product line behaves commercially, or where the boundary of your authorisation sits. This handbook covers the insurance products a POSP can sell in India, line by line, from the advisor’s side of the table rather than the customer’s.

Key Takeaways

• IRDAI’s point of sales rules set the ceiling: a POSP sells only simple, filed POS products.
• Within that ceiling, your range is set by the organisation that appointed you, not by your certification.
• POS life plans are sold without medical underwriting and carry a regulatory sum assured cap.
• Large or medically underwritten life cover and complex commercial risks go to the broking desk.
• Product mix drives income far more than policy count, because premiums differ by an order of magnitude.

How Your Authorised Range Is Actually Determined

New advisors often assume the certification itself defines what they may sell. It does not. The certification establishes that you have completed prescribed training and passed the examination, and the appointment then determines the specific categories you are authorised to handle.

Three constraints stack on top of each other, and the first is absolute. IRDAI’s point of sales framework sets the ceiling: a POSP may sell only products an insurer has filed as POS products, which are simple, have fixed features and carry regulatory limits on the cover they can provide. The second constraint is what your appointing organisation is itself licensed to distribute. The third is what that organisation has actually trained and authorised you for, which is usually narrower than its own permissions.

This is why two advisors holding the same certification can have very different product ranges. One appointed by a single insurer sells that company’s shelf. One appointed by a broker can quote the POS products of many insurers within the same categories.

The framework these permissions sit inside is published by the regulator, and the applicable rules are the authoritative reference rather than anything communicated informally during onboarding.

A useful way to think about it is that the certification is a driving licence and the appointment is the vehicle. The licence proves competence in general terms, while the vehicle determines what you can actually carry and how far. Advisors who confuse the two spend their first months quoting things they were never authorised to issue.

The practical consequence is that, below the regulatory ceiling, your product range is not a fixed fact. It reflects what your organisation holds, what it has trained you on, and how long you have been producing business for it. All three of those change over time, which means the boundary is worth revisiting annually rather than assuming it is permanent.

Ask for your authorised list in writing

Request a written statement of which product categories you are appointed for before you place your first policy. Most organisations will provide it readily, and the ones that hesitate are telling you something useful. Working from a verbal understanding of your own scope is how advisors end up quoting something they cannot legally issue, which wastes the customer’s time and creates an awkward retreat.

Keep that written scope somewhere you can check quickly rather than filed away. Advisors who have it to hand answer product questions faster and more confidently, and the confidence itself affects whether a customer continues the conversation or goes elsewhere to ask somebody who sounded surer.

Recognise the edge of your scope quickly

Customers will eventually ask about a shop policy, a goods carrying vehicle, a small factory or a professional indemnity cover. Recognising within thirty seconds that a request sits outside your categories is a genuinely valuable skill, because it lets you move straight to a referral rather than promising a quote you cannot deliver. Speed here protects the relationship.

A useful habit is to keep a short mental list of the categories you must refer. Shop cover, goods carrying vehicles, professional indemnity and anything involving employees are the usual four, and having them memorised means you never have to think about it in front of a customer.

Understand that scope can widen over time

Authorised categories are not fixed for life. Additional training usually widens what you may handle, and advisors who complete the available training modules tend to reach a broader range faster. Treat scope as something you build rather than something you were assigned once at onboarding and must live with permanently.

Ask about the route to widening it during onboarding rather than a year later. Knowing what additional training unlocks which categories lets you plan the sequence deliberately, particularly if your network points towards a product line you are not yet authorised to handle.

Motor: The Volume Line Almost Everyone Starts With

Motor cover is where most advisors write their first policies, and there are three good reasons for that which have nothing to do with commission.

It is compulsory under the framework the regulator publishes. At minimum, third party cover is a legal requirement for any vehicle used on a public road in India, which removes the entire task of convincing somebody they need insurance at all.

It renews annually and predictably. Every motor policy you write creates a dated conversation exactly twelve months later, which means the product builds a calendar for you rather than requiring you to invent one.

It is discussed openly. People talk about their vehicles in a way they do not talk about their health or their income, so the conversation opens far more easily than any other line available to you.

The commercial trade off is ticket size. A two wheeler policy might carry a premium of ₹1,200 (about US$14) against a family health policy at ₹35,000 (about US$402), so motor is a volume and renewal business rather than a value one.

The technical content is manageable but not trivial. You need to be comfortable explaining the insured declared value, no claim bonus, voluntary deductibles and the main add on covers before a customer asks about them rather than after.

The most common failure here is treating renewal as re-issue. A vehicle a year older has a different declared value and possibly a different appropriate cover, and advisors who simply repeat last year’s policy lose customers to whoever actually reviews it.

Motor also teaches the operational discipline that every other line depends on. Because the volume is high and the ticket size low, an advisor writing motor policies learns quickly how to collect documents efficiently, issue without errors and track expiry dates across hundreds of customers. Those habits transfer directly to health and life, where the stakes per customer are considerably higher.

One further advantage is that motor claims happen frequently enough to be instructive. A health claim might arrive once in five years across a small book, whereas motor claims are routine, and each one teaches you how the process actually behaves rather than how the brochure describes it. That experience is what makes an advisor credible when a larger claim eventually arrives.

Health: The Line That Rewards Depth

Health cover carries higher premiums, longer conversations and considerably more technical detail than motor, which is why it separates advisors who study from advisors who improvise.

The purchase decision is emotional and financial at once. Customers are simultaneously worried about cost and reluctant to think about illness, which means the conversation needs patience rather than pressure.

The clauses that decide satisfaction are all in the detail. Room rent limits, loading, waiting periods and policy exclusions determine whether a claim settles fully, and none of them appears on a price comparison.

Network quality matters more than network size. Knowing which local hospitals actually run functioning cashless counters, rather than reciting a network hospital list, is what makes your advice locally useful.

The structural questions come up in every conversation. Whether a family floater or individual cover suits a household, and how cashless and reimbursement differ in practice, are the two most common places customers get confused.

Timing is an advisor’s strongest argument. Because waiting periods run from purchase and premiums rise with age, buying earlier is materially better value, and that is a genuine point rather than a sales line.

Health is also where a broker appointment earns its keep. Pre existing conditions produce declines and loadings routinely, and having several insurers to approach is often the difference between a workable policy and none.

Health is also the line where customers most often arrive with a wrong belief that has to be corrected gently. Many assume that any hospital admission is covered in full, that maternity is included by default, or that a policy bought last month will pay for a condition diagnosed last year. None of those is true, and correcting them before purchase rather than at claim is the whole value of an advisor.

The commercial consequence of getting health right is that it produces the most loyal customers in the book. A family whose claim was settled smoothly, with someone available to explain the paperwork, rarely moves for a small premium difference at renewal. That retention is what makes health worth the additional study it demands from an advisor.

Life and Term: The Longest Conversation You Will Have

Life cover is the product where advice matters most and where the gap between good and poor advice takes the longest to become visible.

Be precise about what a POSP actually sells here. Under IRDAI’s point of sales rules, a POSP sells an insurer’s designated POS life products, such as a POS pure term plan, and not its flagship term plan. These products are issued without a medical examination, have fixed features and carry a regulatory cap on sum assured: a POS pure term plan sold without medical underwriting, for example, is limited to ₹25 lakh, and each insurer’s filed POS product states its exact ceiling. A POSP cannot write a large or custom term policy, however strong the customer’s case for one.

The first job is separating protection from investment. Customers frequently arrive wanting both in one product, and explaining how term cover differs from other life products honestly is the foundation of everything that follows.

Sum assured is where most advice fails. A cover amount chosen because the premium felt comfortable, rather than because it reflects income, dependants and outstanding liabilities, is a policy that disappoints at the only moment it matters.

Disclosure discipline is non negotiable here. Term claims are rejected most often for non disclosure, and because a POS plan is issued without a medical examination, the answers on the proposal form are the only health information the insurer has. Record them exactly as the customer gives them.

Nomination is the detail everyone forgets. A policy with an outdated or missing nominee creates real difficulty for a family at the worst possible time, and getting the nomination right takes two minutes at proposal stage.

The commercial shape is different from motor. Premiums are higher, the conversation runs across several weeks, and the customer will often want to discuss it with family before deciding, which is entirely reasonable.

The guidance on choosing a term plan is worth reading properly rather than skimming, because customers ask comparative questions here that a superficial understanding will not survive.

Term cover also carries an emotional obstacle that motor and health do not. Customers are being asked to plan for their own death, and many will postpone the decision several times before committing. Treating that hesitation as reluctance to buy, rather than as a normal human response, is why many advisors abandon term conversations far too early.

The advisor’s practical role here is to keep the arithmetic honest. Working through income, dependants, outstanding loans and the number of years cover is genuinely needed produces a sum assured the customer can defend to themselves. A number arrived at that way survives the family discussion that almost always follows, while a number chosen for premium comfort usually does not. When that honest number is above the POS ceiling, the case is no longer a POSP sale. Refer it to the broking desk, where a fully underwritten term plan can be arranged, rather than shrinking the cover to fit the product you are allowed to sell.

Travel, Personal Accident and the Attachable Covers

These lines rarely drive a customer conversation on their own, but they attach well to conversations you are already having and they are consistently under sold.

Travel cover is seasonal and event driven. It attaches naturally to a customer mentioning a trip, and the practical decision is usually between single trip and multi trip rather than between insurers.

The exclusions matter more here than in most lines because customers assume broad cover. Being clear about what travel policies do not cover before purchase prevents almost all of the disappointment this product otherwise generates.

Student travel is a distinct segment with its own timing. Enquiries cluster around admission cycles, and international travel cover for students carries different requirements from a holiday policy.

Personal accident cover is the most under sold product available to an advisor. It is inexpensive, easy to explain and attaches to almost any conversation about income protection or vehicle use.

Critical illness sits alongside it and is frequently confused with health cover. Explaining how the two differ clearly is a short conversation that regularly produces an additional policy.

The authority treats pressure selling as a conduct matter, and none of these should be pushed. They should be mentioned once, accurately, at the point in a conversation where they are genuinely relevant, and then left with the customer to decide.

What all of these covers share is that they are bought rather than sold. A customer who has just arranged a trip, taken delivery of a vehicle or started a new job is momentarily receptive in a way they will not be a month later. Recognising those moments in conversations you are already having is the entire technique.

The mistake to avoid is bundling them into every conversation regardless of relevance. An advisor who mentions personal accident cover to every customer becomes somebody who always has something extra to sell, and that reputation costs more than the additional policies are worth. Relevance is what keeps the mention credible.

!Infographic supporting insurance products a POSP can sell

Where the Boundary Sits: What You Must Refer

The most important thing in this handbook is not what you can sell. It is knowing precisely where your authorisation stops.

Two kinds of request sit outside it. The first is life cover above the POS sum assured ceiling, or any plan that needs medical underwriting. The second is commercial: property, marine cargo, professional indemnity, public liability and large group programmes generally sit outside a POSP scope. These are broking desk products and the correct action is a referral rather than an attempt.

Why referring is commercially better than attempting

A referral keeps the customer relationship with you, serves them properly through people who handle that risk daily, and keeps your appointment intact. An unauthorised sale risks all three at once. Probus lists what it handles at the commercial level under its business cover pages, and knowing that page well makes referring quick and confident rather than apologetic.

There is also a practical benefit in how the customer experiences it. Being told immediately that something needs a specialist, and being introduced to one, reads as competence rather than limitation. Customers rarely expect a single person to handle every risk, and they notice when somebody pretends otherwise.

Group and SME enquiries are the common edge case

Small business customers frequently ask about cover for staff, premises or goods in the same conversation as their personal policy. Liability cover for small businesses and marine cargo for small traders are both typical broking desk work, and both arrive disguised as simple questions from customers you already serve well.

These enquiries are worth handling well precisely because they come from customers who already trust you. A trader whose shop cover was arranged properly through a referral will bring you every personal policy in the family afterwards, which makes the referral commercially valuable rather than a lost sale.

When in doubt, ask before quoting

The cost of asking your appointing organisation whether something falls inside your categories is a short delay. The cost of guessing wrong is an unauthorised sale, an awkward retreat from a quote already given, or a policy that cannot be issued after the customer has committed. The asymmetry makes the decision obvious.

Build the habit early, while the questions are still infrequent. Advisors who establish a routine of confirming scope before quoting rarely breach it later, whereas those who guess successfully once tend to guess again with progressively larger risks attached to being wrong.

Building a Product Mix That Actually Pays

Once you know what you may sell, the commercial question is which of it to focus on, and the honest answer depends entirely on the network you already have.

Match products to the people you already know. Salaried families point towards health and term. Traders and vehicle owners point towards motor and small commercial referrals. Building against your network rather than against a commission table is what makes the first year survivable.

Two or three products is usually the right depth. Below that you decline too much business; above that you stop being genuinely expert in any of it, and customers notice the difference within a single conversation.

Sequence matters as much as selection. Motor first, because it opens easily and builds a renewal calendar. Health second, once you have local credibility. Term third, because it demands the most trust and the longest conversation.

Understand the arithmetic before setting expectations. Ten health policies and ten two wheeler policies are not remotely the same month, and the way remuneration is structured varies by line and by insurer rather than being uniform.

Attach the smaller covers rather than campaigning for them. Personal accident and travel work best mentioned once inside a conversation the customer already wanted to have, not as separate outreach.

Review the mix annually. As the book matures the balance shifts towards renewals, and the products that suited your first year may not be the ones that suit your third.

It is also worth reviewing the mix against the market you actually work rather than against general advice. An advisor in a district town with high two wheeler ownership will build a different book from one working with salaried families in a metro, and copying somebody else’s product mix without their network produces disappointing results.

Finally, resist the temptation to chase whichever line pays most. Remuneration varies by product, but an advisor who sells against their own network’s needs will place more policies, retain them longer and be referred more often than one optimising for payout per case. The compounding favours fit over rate every time.

The Product Knowledge That Customers Actually Test

Customers rarely test breadth. They test depth, and they do it with a small number of predictable questions that reveal immediately whether you understand what you are selling.

They ask what is not covered. Being able to answer that fluently, for whichever product you are discussing, is the single strongest credibility signal available to you and it costs nothing but preparation.

They ask what happens at claim. Not the theory but the sequence: who to call, what documents are needed, how long it usually takes. Advisors who can walk through that unprompted close considerably more business.

They ask why one option costs more. The answer is almost always a structural difference in the wording rather than a difference in the insurer, and explaining that specific difference is what separates advice from quoting.

They ask what you would do. Customers want a recommendation, not a menu. Giving one, with the reasoning attached and the limitations stated, is the whole job.

They ask about the worst case. Being honest that some claims are declined, and explaining why, builds far more trust than an assurance you cannot support and would not be able to honour.

None of this requires actuarial knowledge. It requires having read the wordings of the two or three products you actually sell, which is a weekend of work that pays for the rest of your career.

A final test customers apply without announcing it is consistency. If your answer to a question changes between the first conversation and the third, or differs from what the policy document says, everything else you told them becomes suspect. Saying that you will confirm and coming back accurately is always better than answering confidently and wrongly.

None of these tests can be passed by improvisation. They are passed by having read the wordings for the products you sell, having watched a few claims run their course, and being willing to say plainly when something is not covered. That combination is what customers mean when they describe an advisor as good.

Conclusion

The insurance products a POSP can sell are set by your appointment rather than your certification, and knowing exactly where that boundary sits is as valuable as knowing what falls inside it. Motor opens the conversation, health rewards study, POS term cover within its regulatory ceiling demands trust, and the attachable covers work best mentioned once at the right moment. Everything beyond your categories should be referred rather than attempted. If you are still deciding which appointment gives you the range you need, the onboarding options set out what is available.

Frequently Asked Questions