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July 2, 2026

Industry Risk Profiles - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

EV Battery Cell Gigafactory Operational Risk Profile in India 2026: Formation Fire, Electrolyte Inventory and the High-PML Property Programme

India's first 40 GWh cell gigafactories are entering operations in 2026 with no domestic loss history, concentrating first-of-a-kind values in a few sites. This post sets out the formation-room fire, electrolyte and NMP solvent, and dry-room exposures that drive the property-plus-business-interruption placement and the questions reinsurers will actually ask.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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AI & Insurtech - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

RBI's FREE-AI Framework Reaches Insurers in 2026: Building the AI Inventory, Audit Tiering and the National Repository Submission Your Broking Firm Will Owe

The RBI FREE-AI report and the MeitY India AI Governance Guidelines have set a sector template that IRDAI is expected to mirror for insurers and brokers. This post explains the AI inventory, risk-tiered audits and repository submissions you should build now, before they harden into binding directions.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Global & Cross-Border Insurance - June 18, 2026 - 15 min read

Stock Throughput Cover for Indian Importers Using Free Trade Warehousing Zones in 2026

Importers running stock through an FTWZ split their exposure across an ocean leg, a bonded storage leg and a domestic clearance leg, and stitching together a marine cargo policy with a separate fire and burglary cover leaves gaps at every handover. A single stock throughput policy covers transit and storage on one wording, and this post sets out how FTWZ bonded warehousing changes insurable interest and risk of loss, how bonded goods are valued, the accumulation problem at the zone, and the marine wording points to settle.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 18, 2026 - 9 min read

Reading GIC Re's Numbers: Loss-Making Segments, Obligatory Cession and Retrocession in India 2026

GIC Re sits at the centre of the Indian non-life market as the national reinsurer. The health of its segment-level results in fire, agriculture, health and aviation shapes the treaty terms every primary insurer can offer. This piece reads the reinsurer's own underwriting economics: the obligatory cession it receives, the segments that have run loss-making, and the retrocession it buys to protect its tail. It then explains why all of that flows back into the capacity and conditions a commercial buyer sees at renewal.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Regulation & Compliance - June 18, 2026 - 9 min read

Designing Cover, Not Just Buying It: How Commercial Buyers Use IRDAI's 2024 Products Regulations and Use-and-File to Get Manuscript Wording, Add-Ons and Riders That Fit the Risk

The IRDAI (Insurance Products) Regulations 2024 and the use-and-file procedure let insurers design, customise and enrich commercial covers with manuscript wording, bespoke add-ons and riders without waiting in an approval queue. This piece is about product design from the commercial buyer's seat: how to brief an insurer's product team for tailored cover, which extensions and add-ons are worth building, how riders and endorsements should be drafted, and where an insurer's freedom to design runs out.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Global & Cross-Border Insurance - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

IRDAI's Order-of-Preference Rewrite: Where Cross-Border Reinsurers and Lloyd's India Now Sit in the Cession Queue

IRDAI's 2026 exposure draft proposes scrapping GIC Re's blanket right of first refusal and re-sequencing the reinsurance cession order. Cross-border reinsurers drop to a second category behind Indian reinsurers, FRBs, Lloyd's India and IIOs. Brokers placing large marine, energy and engineering risks must rework their quote-seeking workflow before notification.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Regulation & Compliance - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

IRDAI's New Regulation-Making Framework: How the June 2026 Draft Changes the Pace and Predictability of Commercial Insurance Rules

On 16-17 June 2026 IRDAI released a draft framework standardising how it frames, amends and consults on regulations under the 2025 Insurance Laws Amendment Act. For commercial brokers and risk managers, the procedural detail is an early-warning system: read the pipeline correctly and you get months of lead time on capacity, pricing and wording shifts.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Insurance Products - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

Using the 2025 Regulatory Sandbox to Get a Novel Commercial Cover to Market: A Broker and Insurer Playbook

IRDAI's Regulatory Sandbox Regulations 2025 widened the testing scope to any innovation across the insurance value chain, carving out only prudential matters. This is a practical route for parametric, blockchain-verified and AI-priced commercial covers. Here is how brokers and insurers can push a specific product through the gates.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Market & Trends - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

Jio-Allianz and Allianz Jio Reinsurance: What the New Capital Block Means for Commercial Placement in 2026

Allianz has exited Bajaj Allianz, stood up a Mumbai-based reinsurer with Jio Financial, and signed a binding 50:50 primary general and health JV. For brokers placing corporate and mid-market programmes, this reassembles Allianz capacity under a distribution-heavy partner. Here is how to reprice the panel before renewals, not after.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Claims & Loss Prevention - June 18, 2026 - 8 min read

The Red Sea Reopening and Indian Trade Claims in India 2026: Cargo, Contingent Business Interruption and the Disruption That Pays Nothing

As and if container shipping returns to the Red Sea, Indian exporters and importers face a transitional period of rerouting, port congestion and delay, and many assume their insurance will respond. It often will not, because cargo and contingent business interruption cover turn on physical damage that pure delay does not cause. This piece reads the reopening as a scenario and sets out where the cover bites and where it leaves the buyer exposed, whether transit normalises or the Cape diversion drags on.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 18, 2026 - 10 min read

Hail Becomes a Costed Peril: Severe Convective Storm Accumulation Underwriting for Indian Solar, Agri and Stockyard Risks in 2026

Aon's January 2026 report named severe convective storms the costliest insured peril of the century, and hail drives most of it. Indian underwriters have buried this exposure inside undifferentiated STFI loadings. This is how brokers should expect SCS to be isolated, zoned, sub-limited and separately deductibled on spring placements.

By Tarun Kumar Singh

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Industry Risk Profiles - June 18, 2026 - 8 min read

Solar and Float Glass Furnace Plants in India 2026: A Commercial Insurance Risk Profile

After anti-dumping duties on imported solar and flat glass, Indian manufacturers including Borosil Renewables and HNG Float Glass are adding furnace capacity through 2026. This risk profile sets out the tank-furnace, regenerator, molten-tin-bath, hydrogen-atmosphere, annealing-lehr and furnace-campaign exposures of a float and solar glass line, why a frozen or breached furnace is the maximum loss, and the engineering, property, downtime and erection cover an operator should carry.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Risk Management Strategies - June 18, 2026 - 8 min read

Tariffs, Trade Realignment and the Board's Risk Agenda: A Geopolitical Risk-Transfer Strategy for Indian Corporates in 2026

The 2026 India-US interim trade framework and the recalibration of tariffs are changing sourcing, demand and supply chains for Indian corporates, turning geopolitical and trade risk into a standing board-level concern. This piece sets out how to bring trade and geopolitical risk onto the risk register, where insurance can and cannot help, and why the strategy must combine operational adaptation with targeted risk transfer.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Operations & Best Practices - June 17, 2026 - 14 min read

Cell Captives and Protected Cell Companies: A Feasibility Read for Indian Corporates in 2026

A protected cell company lets a mid-size Indian corporate rent a ring-fenced cell inside a shared core rather than fund a standalone captive, cutting set-up cost and committed capital. This post sets out the PCC and incorporated-cell-company anatomy, the rent-a-captive promoter model, how a cell differs from a standalone captive, the IFSCA cell regime taking shape at GIFT City, the segregation statute, fronting and collateral, and the rent-versus-build crossover for an Indian mid-market group.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Market & Trends - June 17, 2026 - 8 min read

Combined Ratios Above 100 and the Return of Pricing Discipline: What Insurer Profitability Pressure Means for Commercial Buyers in 2026

Indian general insurers continued to run combined ratios above 100 in FY26, weighed down by the loss-making third-party motor segment and the 1/n premium-recognition rule, even as pricing discipline improved. For a commercial buyer this matters: insurers under profitability pressure underwrite more selectively. This piece explains the dynamics and how a corporate should read insurer financial pressure into its own renewal.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Risk Management Strategies - June 17, 2026 - 14 min read

Acting on Fire Risk-Engineering Survey Recommendations in India 2026

A fire risk-engineering survey tells a corporate where its risk sits and what to do about it, and in a detariffed market acting on the recommendations drives both safety and price. This post sets out the survey process, how recommendations are graded into required, priority and advisory, the warranty and condition implications of accepting them, how compliance affects rating and capacity, and how to track recommendations to closure.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Insurance Products - June 17, 2026 - 13 min read

Intellectual Property Infringement and Defence Insurance for Indian Technology, Pharma and Manufacturing Firms in 2026

Indian technology, pharmaceutical and manufacturing firms face rising patent, trademark and copyright disputes as they scale into export markets where IP litigation is routine. This post sets out what IP infringement-defence and enforcement cover do, how they overlap with technology errors-and-omissions and product liability, why the Indian market still leans on global capacity, and which firms actually need the cover.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Regulation & Compliance - June 17, 2026 - 9 min read

The Broker CISO's 2026 Workplan: Running the Audit, VAPT and Board-Reporting Side of IRDAI's Cyber Security Guidelines

IRDAI's revised cyber security guidelines hand a broking firm's Chief Information Security Officer a defined annual workplan: an independent reporting line free of business targets, a vulnerability-assessment and penetration-testing cadence, an annual third-party security audit with non-conformities closed on the clock, a tested incident-response lifecycle, and a board pack that turns all of it into decisions. This piece is written for the broker CISO and the board they answer to, setting out how to operationalise audit, VAPT and reporting rather than restating the rule text.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Global & Cross-Border Insurance - June 17, 2026 - 15 min read

Non-Admitted Insurance and the Tax Traps for Indian Multinationals Insuring Foreign Subsidiaries 2026

An Indian parent that insures its overseas subsidiaries from a single India-issued master policy can find the cover invalid where the subsidiary sits, the claim unpayable locally, host-country premium taxes evaded and the premium outflow questioned under FEMA. This post sets out the admitted-versus-non-admitted distinction, the local compulsory covers, the premium-tax and claim-payment traps, the RBI exchange-control angle and why a controlled-master plus local-policy structure is the answer.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Global & Cross-Border Insurance - June 17, 2026 - 14 min read

Red Sea Rerouting Around the Cape: Delay, General Average and Marine Cover for Indian Trade in 2026

With much India-Europe and India-US East Coast shipping still diverting around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, Indian exporters and importers face two to three extra weeks of transit, war-risk surcharges on the Red Sea routing, raised general average exposure and demurrage on stretched supply chains. Standard cargo cover does not pay for delay or lost market, and this post sets out how the rerouting reshapes the risk and how to structure marine cargo, war risk and trade-disruption cover around it.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Insurance Products - June 17, 2026 - 16 min read

Subcontractor Default Insurance for Indian EPC and Infrastructure Contractors: A First-Party Alternative to the Bond in 2026

Subcontractor default insurance lets a principal contractor insure itself directly against the cost of a subcontractor's default, a first-party answer that works differently from the three-party surety or performance bond. This post sets out what SDI covers, how it differs from a bond, the prequalification underwriting it rests on, the deductibles and co-pay that keep the contractor engaged, and the nascent Indian market for it.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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Underwriting & Risk - June 17, 2026 - 14 min read

Underwriting OT and ICS Cyber Risk for Indian Manufacturing in 2026: The Property and Cyber Boundary

As Indian factories connect their plant floors to corporate networks, a cyber intrusion can now stop a line, damage machinery and trigger business interruption, exposures that standard cyber policies and property policies each handle only partly. This post sets out the OT/IT convergence problem, the physical-damage-from-cyber gap, the silent-cyber and property overlap, and how underwriters assess and structure cover for operational-technology risk.

By Sarvada Editorial Team

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