IRDAI disclosures

Who holds the insurance agency?

A person, not a firm. An insurance agency is held by a natural person. This practice is a sole proprietorship, which is not a legal entity separate from its proprietor, so the name of the practice is a trading name and the agency is held by Dr. Sonali Walia personally. That is who is accountable for what you are told.

Two things follow from that, and they are the two things comparable sites most often get wrong.

• There is no Principal Officer. That role belongs to corporate agents and brokers. An individual agency does not have one, and naming one here would assert a status this registration does not carry. The licensed person and the grievance contact are the same individual, named below and in the footer of every page.
• There is no CIN. A sole proprietorship is not a company, so there is no company identification number to quote. The GSTIN below is a tax registration, not a company registration, and the two are not interchangeable.

Identity, registration and registered office

These are the registration facts. The footer of every page on this site carries the same values, rendered from the same source, so the two cannot disagree.

The registration code is the identifier to quote if you ever need to refer to this agency in a complaint, a query to the insurer, or a query to the regulator.

Which insurer is this agency appointed by?

One life insurer, and only one. The appointment of insurance agents is governed by section 42 of the Insurance Act, 1938. This agency is appointed by, and tied to, the single life insurer named below, shown with that insurer's own IRDAI registration number. There is no second life insurer.

Because there is one insurer, there is nothing to compare. You will not find a cross-insurer comparison anywhere on this site. Treat with caution anyone who is tied to a single insurer and presents one anyway.

What is this agency authorised to do?

To solicit and service life insurance business for the insurer that appointed it. That is the whole of the authority. The agency distributes: it does not carry risk, does not price risk, and does not decide the outcome of any application or any claim. Those decisions belong to the insurer alone.

Rebates are prohibited

Section 41 of the Insurance Act, 1938 prohibits offering, or accepting, any rebate of premium or of commission as an inducement to take out, renew or continue a policy. The section leaves one thing open, and it is worth naming so the rule is not overstated: a rebate allowed in accordance with the insurer's own published prospectus or tables. That is the insurer's to publish, and it is not an agent's to offer. We do not offer one. If anyone offers you a cut of their own commission to win your business, that is not a discount — it is prohibited by the Act, it carries a penalty, and it tells you something about how that person works.

How is this agency paid?

By the insurer, as commission. When a policy is placed, the insurer pays commission to the agent, within the limits IRDAI sets for insurers' commission and expenses of management. You pay us no separate fee. The cost of distribution already sits inside the premium the insurer charges you, whoever you buy through.

No rate and no amount appears anywhere on this site, and none will be put to you before the insurer has priced your policy. Until underwriting is finished there is no premium for a commission to be calculated on, so any number offered earlier would be invented.

You can ask what the basis is

Ask us, at any point before you apply, on what basis we are remunerated for the policy under discussion. It is a fair question and it gets a straight answer.

Ask it, because there is a real conflict of interest here and it is better named than hidden: commission is calculated on the premium, so a larger policy pays the agent more than a smaller one. The protection against that is not our good intentions. It is that you can see how the cover was arrived at, and that you can ask why it is that size.

Where the limits come from

Commission paid by insurers is regulated rather than left to the insurer's discretion. The current limits sit in the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Expenses of Management, including Commission, of Insurers) Regulations, 2024, made under the Insurance Act, 1938. The regulations and the circulars under them are published by IRDAI.

The mandatory statements

Two statements are required to appear. They are in the footer of every page on this site as well as here, and they are reproduced verbatim rather than paraphrased.

Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation.

In plain terms: nobody at IRDAI will call you to sell you a policy, to announce a bonus, or to ask you to invest a premium. If you get a call like that, it is not the regulator, and a police complaint is the right response.

How can you check any of this independently?

Three ways, none of which asks you to take our word for it. Ask us to show the agent identity card issued by the insurer. Ask the insurer named above to confirm the registration code. And read the regulator's own guidance for policyholders, which tells you to do the first of those before you buy from anyone.

• Ask to see the identity card. An agent appointed by an insurer is issued an identity card by that insurer, and asking to see it before you buy from anyone is worth doing. We will show ours. The regulator publishes guidance for policyholders on its own site — irdai.gov.in.
• Ask the insurer. The insurer that appoints an agent holds the record of that appointment. Its own service channels can confirm the registration code shown above against the named agent.
• Go to the regulator. IRDAI is the authority that regulates insurers and their distribution channels, and publishes the regulations this page refers to.

Where do you complain?

There are four steps: us, then the insurer, then the regulator, then the Insurance Ombudsman. Anything about how this agency has behaved comes to the grievance contact below. Anything about the policy itself — a decision, a servicing failure, a claim — belongs with the insurer, because those are the insurer's decisions and not ours.

1. Us, first. Dr. Sonali Walia — [email protected], +91 87968 39997.
2. The insurer, second. Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company Limited operates its own grievance redressal channel. A complaint about a policy, a servicing failure or a claim decision belongs there, because the insurer made the decision.
3. The regulator, third. If the insurer has not resolved it, you can escalate to IRDAI through Bima Bharosa, the regulator's online grievance portal.
4. The Insurance Ombudsman, fourth. An independent forum for policyholder complaints, administered by the Council for Insurance Ombudsmen. It costs you nothing, its award binds the insurer, and there are conditions on the kind of complaint it can take.

The full route — what to send, who holds it at each step, and what to do if nothing happens — is set out on the grievance redressal page.

A complaint about how your personal data was handled runs a different route, under the data protection law rather than the insurance regulator. The Privacy Policy sets that one out.

What these words mean

Insurer

The company that issues the policy, carries the risk and pays the claim. It is registered with IRDAI as an insurer and holds its own registration number, shown above.

Individual insurance agent

A natural person appointed by an insurer to solicit and service that insurer's business, registered against an IRDAI agent registration code. An agent represents the insurer, not the whole market.

Insurance broker

A separately registered intermediary that represents the customer and may place business with more than one insurer. This practice is not a broker.

Underwriting

The insurer's assessment of your risk, and its decision on whether to accept your application, on what terms and at what premium. It happens after you apply, and it is not ours to do.

Solicitation

Approaching you about insurance, explaining it, and helping you apply. It is what an agent is authorised to do, and it is what the mandatory statement above is referring to.