What a POSP Can Sell, and What It Cannot
The licence is easy because the shelf is limited. Exactly where the product boundary sits.
A POSP can sell only pre-underwritten, standardised point-of-sale insurance products: plans whose benefits are pre-defined and cannot be customised. In practice that means motor insurance, personal accident, travel, simple term life plans, standardised health and hospital cash covers, and other pre-approved POS products.
The boundary is the whole design. IRDAI lowered the entry bar to 15 hours of training precisely because these products need no underwriting judgement to sell; the trade is that everything requiring judgement stays off the POSP shelf. Knowing where the line sits matters twice: it defines your working life, and it is tested on the qualifying exam.
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On the Shelf vs Off the Shelf
| A POSP can sell | A POSP cannot sell |
|---|---|
| Motor insurance (third-party and standardised own-damage) | Customised or negotiated commercial covers |
| Personal accident covers | Complex life products structured to a client's situation |
| Travel insurance | Plans requiring individual underwriting decisions |
| Simple term life plans | Products with benefits that can be tailored per customer |
| Standardised health and hospital cash plans | Anything not on the pre-approved POS list |
| Home and other pre-approved POS products |
The Two Words Doing All the Work
- Pre-underwritten
- The insurer has already decided the acceptance rules before the sale. The POSP does not assess risk; the product's built-in rules do.
- Standardised
- The benefits are fixed and identical for every buyer of the plan. There is nothing to negotiate, structure or tailor, which is what makes point-of-sale distribution possible.
Scope-of-work questions appear on the real exam. Practise them.
What the Boundary Means for Earnings
Standardised products tend to be volume products: motor renewals, travel covers, small term plans. Commissions per policy are modest, and income builds on the number of policies rather than the size of any one of them. That suits the part-time, app-driven selling the POSP model was built for.
The larger single commissions live in customised products, which sit on the IC-38 side of the line. This is the usual reason active POSPs eventually take the IC-38 exam: not because the POSP shelf stops working, but because their best clients start asking for things the shelf cannot hold.
Selling Outside the Boundary Is a Compliance Breach, Not a Stretch Goal
The product limits come from IRDAI's Master Circular on Point of Sales Products and Persons, and your sponsor's exam will test that you know them. In practice the sponsor's platform only offers you POS products anyway, but recommending or arranging anything beyond them is a conduct violation, not initiative.
Where to Go From Here
If the shelf sounds sufficient, the registration process page walks the path to certification. If it sounds tight, read the POSP vs IC-38 comparison before deciding; upgrading later is common, and starting simpler is not a mistake, but knowing the boundary before you sign up beats discovering it after.
Next steps
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