28 Sep 2026 · weekly

SROTrac Weekly #4: The register doubles to 18; IRDAI takes a knife to distribution economics

Week to 28 September 2026

TL;DR

The register doubled. SROTrac now tracks 18 SRO bodies across 4 regulators — RBI's nine, plus SEBI's BASL and AIBI, IRDAI's statutory Life and General Insurance Councils, IBBI's three insolvency professional agencies, and context bodies AMFI and ANMI — with 774 member organisations in ten published rosters. [1]
IRDAI picked the same week to propose the sharpest reset of insurance distribution economics in years. Its 23 September consultation paper caps commissions, rewires expense limits and restructures the distributor market — the exact industry the two newly-tracked councils exist to self-regulate. Comments are open till 25 October. [2]
SEBI cancelled the registrations of 12 research analysts, including Religare Capital Markets, for non-payment of renewal fees — enforcement pruning of BASL's research-analyst constituency, done by the regulator, not the supervisory body. [3]

Roster & register changes

The big change is the register itself: 9 bodies → 18. [1] What was added, and what kind of "SRO" each is — because the word now covers four legally distinct things:

SEBI (recognised supervisory bodies): BASL (BSE Administration and Supervision Ltd) — recognised as the Investment Adviser Administration and Supervisory Body for three years from 1 June 2021, then designated both IAASB and RAASB under SEBI's May 2024 supervision framework effective 25 July 2024 [4] — and AIBI, the merchant bankers' association whose SEBI recognition dates to its 1997-98 annual report. Neither publishes a member roster we can capture. Two context bodies join unrecognised: AMFI (56 AMCs on its member roster; an industry association since 1995 that SEBI has never recognised as an SRO) and ANMI (~900 trading members, has publicly sought SRO status, hasn't got it). [1]
IRDAI (statutory councils): the Life Insurance Council (27 insurers on its published list) and the General Insurance Council (49 members) — both self-regulatory councils constituted under Section 64C of the Insurance Act, 1938 — making them the oldest bodies on this register by decades. [5]
IBBI (registered professional agencies): the three insolvency professional agencies — IIIPI (ICAI), ICSI Institute of Insolvency Professionals, and IPA of ICMAI — registered in FY 2016-17. [1]

The stats bar now reads 18 SROs / 4 regulators / 774 member organisations / 79 in 2+ SROs / 2 SRO-FTs. [1] The overlap count held at 79, concentrated in the bank-heavy FIMMDA and FEDAI rosters; the AMC-insurer bridge into the council layer is now visible on the site's overlap view. That spread is the point: "self-regulatory organisation" in Indian finance runs from statutory councils (1938 Act), to recognised supervisory bodies (SEBI), to registered professional agencies (IBBI), to RBI recognitions (2014–2026) — and finally to industry bodies that have never been recognised at all (AMFI, ANMI). Roster transparency varies just as widely: ten of the 18 have published lists we captured; the rest show "n/p (no public roster)".

The nine RBI rosters: no changes — verified, not assumed. The daily refresh ran all week and a git diff of every member CSV since Weekly #3 is empty. FACE holds at 85, UFF at 121, FIMMDA at 116, FEDAI at 108, Sahamati at 110, MFIN at 84, SRPA at 18. FIDC and Sa-Dhan still publish no roster — and with the register now at 18 bodies, the no-roster club has grown to eight, including both SEBI supervisory bodies and all three IBBI IPAs. Enlistment with a supervisory body you cannot independently verify is a weaker protection than a public list; that watch item now applies well beyond RBI's sectors.

On the register this week: the site also gained a federated search page querying all three sousveillance registers (RegTrac, SROTrac, LobbyWatch), and the blog archive gained year/month pages and an RSS feed. [6]

Regulatory & consultation watch

IRDAI's "Recalibrating Economics of Insurance Distribution" (23 September) is the week's headline. [2] The two-part consultation paper proposes: commission caps recalibrated by product, channel and sales effort rather than uniform percentages — press coverage of the paper cites first-year health commissions capped at 15–20% with renewals/porting at 5–10%, and nil commission on third-party motor premium with 5% on own-damage [7]; company-level expense-of-management glide paths over five years — 12.5% of gross direct premium income for life insurers, and for general insurers a move from 30% of gross written premium to 20% of GDPI [8]; consolidation of distributors into three broad categories with lower entry barriers and capital requirements [9]. The paper's own data explains why: broker commissions in general insurance jumped 173% (₹6,348 crore in FY23 to ₹17,348 crore in FY25) while broker-placed premium rose 37% [10]; first-year commissions on pure term plans have run as high as 81%, and credit-life payouts climbed from 5% of premium in FY23 to 28% in FY25. [11] Comments are open until 25 October 2026. [12] Markets voted immediately: on the next trading day PB Fintech (Policybazaar) fell 36%. [11]

Where is the SRO in this? The Life Insurance Council and General Insurance Council are statutory self-regulatory bodies for the exact industry being reset — commissions and distribution conduct are council territory by construction. We found no public statement from either council on the consultation as of writing; that is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. If the councils' role here is to channel member views into the rulemaking, their submissions should be public — a consultation on distribution economics is precisely where a consumer should be able to read what the industry's own SRO asked for.

SEBI pruned 12 research analysts off the register (24 September). Religare Capital Markets and 11 other entities lost their registrations for not paying the five-yearly renewal fees under the SEBI (Research Analysts) Regulations, 2014 — fees due between May 2024 and November 2025. The entities responded to show-cause notices but could not substantiate claims of non-payment; SEBI framed the cancellations as protecting investors from misuse of expired registrations. [3] BASL is the supervisory body (RAASB) for research analysts [4], but the enforcement muscle here was SEBI's own. Same pattern as last week's MDR watch: when it comes to actual discipline, the regulator acts and the SRO machinery stays offstage.

The RBI-sector SROs were quiet. We found no announcements from FACE, UFF, FEDAI, Sahamati, MFIN, Sa-Dhan, FIMMDA, SRPA or FIDC in the week's coverage. UFF's second full week as a recognised SRO-FT produced no visible member or circular activity.

What it means for consumers

Distribution costs are your premium's hidden cargo. Every rupee of commission is priced into what you pay. If the caps and expense glide paths land as proposed, life savings and health products should carry lower embedded sales costs — and the paper's own numbers (81% first-year term commissions; credit-life payouts quintupling in two years) show the size of what's being trimmed. [11] The consultation is open till 25 October: comment. [12]
Check who's selling you "research". Twelve registrations just died for lapsed renewal fees. Before paying anyone for stock tips or advisory content, look up their live SEBI registration — an expired registration means no regulatory recourse worth the name. [3]
The register now spans all four regulators. One page now tells you which body oversees investment advisers, insurers, insolvency professionals, payment operators, forex dealers, microfinance lenders, NBFCs, fintechs and account aggregators — and, importantly, which of them publish their member lists and which don't. [1]
Eight of 18 bodies still publish no roster. The cheapest thing a self-regulatory body can offer the public is its member list. The oldest open item on this register just became a bigger one.

SROTrac Weekly #4: The register doubles to 18; IRDAI takes a knife to distribution economics

TL;DR

Roster & register changes

Regulatory & consultation watch

What it means for consumers

Sources