Insurance Distribution

The chapter aims to lead to an understanding of the role played by an insurance intermediary. Indeed, intermediation consists of facilitating the meeting of demand for and supply of insurance covers in the industry. It is explained that in this directive the guarantee of transparency on the part of distributors, both in terms of costs and disclosures on risk/effective cover of products distributed, is of great importance Lawmakers require, additionally, that a distributor bears in mind the demands and needs of consumers and that monitoring takes place in the period after sales in order to check that the product sold is actually adequate to meet these. Then, four sets of delegated regulations implementing IDD regulations are explained: PRIIPs—Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance Products; (I)PID—Insurance Product Information Document; POG—Product Oversight Governance, i.e. governance of the insurance offering; IBIPs—Insurance Based Investment Products. After this, distribution channels through which insurance undertakings make their products available on the market directly via dedicated owned sales structures or making use of insurance intermediaries are illustrated.