Punjab, Sept. 27 -- A regulator published a consultation paper on a Wednesday. By Thursday's close, Rs 31,000 crore of shareholder value in one company had gone. Nothing had been decided, nothing had been enforced, and nothing was wrong with the process.
That is worth sitting with, because both halves of it are true.
The regulator is not the problem
IRDAI's paper, Recalibrating Economics of Insurance Distribution, asks whether too much of an Indian insurance premium is being consumed by the cost of selling it. It is a reasonable question and the evidence for asking it is not thin.
Consultation is also exactly the right way to raise it. A regulator that published the final rule without warning would deserve far more criticism than one th...