Why Every Intermediary Channel Needs One Operating System and How Flow Is Quietly Becoming It

Every time I sit with someone in insurance distribution, whether it is an agent, a broker, a PoSP network owner, a dealership partner or a corporate channel team, I hear different stories but the same underlying frustration. Quotes take too long. Information lives in too many places. Portals never match. Renewals slip. Claims get buried. Commissions do not reconcile. Very early in my journey, something became obvious. India's insurance distribution is not struggling because people lack capability. It is struggling because the systems around them are fragmented. Every intermediary uses different tools. Every insurer provides different systems. Every workflow is reinvented daily. India does not need ten more portals. It needs one operating system that supports all intermediaries. This is the mission behind Flow. 1. The Real Structure of India's Distribution Ecosystem India's insurance industry is not driven by direct or online sales. It is powered by a wide network of intermediaries who carry the industry on their shoulders. The ecosystem is far more diverse and layered than most people outside the sector realise. Agency Channel Agents work directly with customers, build trust and handle servicing from beginning to end. PoSPs represent a rapidly expanding distribution force, often working with simplified digital journeys. Both groups are crucial for last mile penetration in urban and rural areas. Broker Channel Retail Brokers manage individual and SME customers across all lines of business. Corporate Brokers handle large organisations, complex RFQs, commercial insurance programs, endorsements and claims. NTU and OEM Focused Brokers work closely with automobile manufacturers and dealer networks, especially in motor insurance distribution. Corporate Agent Channel Banks and Financial Institutions distribute insurance as part of their financial product suite. They contribute significantly to life and health insurance sales and manage customer servicing on behalf of insurers. Insurance Marketing Firms (IMFs) IMFs enable smaller agencies and individuals to operate with a structured model that includes marketing, distribution and servicing. They bridge the gap between traditional agents and large brokerages. Reinsurance Brokers They manage risks at the institutional level and arrange reinsurance support for insurers and large commercial clients. Their work influences pricing, risk selection and portfolio sustainability across the industry. Dealership Distribution Automobile dealerships drive substantial motor insurance volume. They handle instant conversions, renewals and claim coordination but often operate with low backend standardisation. Web Aggregators Aggregators generate consumer leads through online comparison. Their journeys rely heavily on intermediaries and insurers for final policy issuance and servicing. Embedded Insurance Partners Apps and digital platforms integrate insurance into the primary transaction journey such as travel, mobility, ecommerce and payments. They rely on strong backend workflows and insurer integrations. Corporate and HR Distribution Internal company teams manage employee health insurance, endorsements, e cards, wellness programs and claims support. All of these channels together form India's intermediary driven distribution engine. They contribute the majority of insurance business in the country, yet almost all of them operate without a shared infrastructure. 2. The Pain Points Every Intermediary Quietly Faces Quotes create daily stress and require repeated data entry across portals Data is scattered across WhatsApp, email, downloads, Excel, insurer websites Admin errors cause real monetary loss and damage trust Portals are inconsistent and require juggling poor tooling Not everyone is comfortable with complex technology These are not workflow problems. They are infrastructure problems. 3. The Biggest Myth "Online insurance will replace offline distribution" This belief does not match India's reality. Insurance is a trust led financial decision. Customers may research online, but many still purchase through someone they trust. Online and offline are not competitors. They are two sides of the same engine. 4. Why the Future Requires One Operating System All channels need the same building blocks: Quotes, issuance, endorsements, renewals, claims, commissions. Interoperability does not exist today: Everyone uses isolated tools and nothing communicates cleanly. The next 500 million customers are beyond metro cities: Distribution needs simple, intuitive infrastructure to scale. Accuracy builds trust and trust builds business: Better tools strengthen the entire ecosystem. Flow was created to fill this gap. 5. What Flow Already Enables Quote Comparison That Used to Take Hours, Now Done in 5 Seconds A retail broker in Ludhiana told me he used to spend 45 minutes per customer comparing quotes across 4-5 insurers, toggling between portals, copying data into Excel, formatting PDFs. With Flow, he uploads requirements once and gets a comparison sheet instantly. What took hours now happens in seconds. He closed 30% more business last month simply because he could respond faster. Policy Ingestion That Turns Chaos Into Clarity A corporate broker handling 200+ group policies was drowning in PDFs. Policy details scattered across emails, renewals missed, endorsement requests buried. Flow's AI scans complete policy PDFs and extracts every business critical detail in seconds: policyholder name, coverage, premium, renewal date, insurer details. No manual data entry. No errors. One broker called it "having a team of 10 assistants who never sleep." These are not hypothetical improvements. These are real workflows, transformed. 6. What the Industry Needs Next The building blocks are becoming clear. The infrastructure layer India's distribution needs must include: Unified aggregator quote APIs that work across all insurers Embedded insurance plug and play infrastructure for digital platforms PoSP onboarding and certification modules that scale training Dealership insurance operating systems with VIN and RC automation Claims and endorsement API layers that connect all stakeholders Portal integrators that let intermediaries access multiple systems from one place This is not about replacing what exists. This is about making what exists work together. The question is not whether this infrastructure will be built. The question is who will build it with the right understanding of ground reality. 7. A Moment That Shaped Flow's Purpose A broker once told me he personally paid a customer's premium difference because his staff entered a wrong amount. He said, "It was my mistake in the customer's eyes so I fixed it." People driving Indian insurance deserve better tools. Tools that prevent errors. Tools that protect trust. Tools that amplify effort instead of multiplying workload. 8. What Outsiders Do Not See Intermediaries are not old fashioned or resistant to technology. They are some of the hardest working professionals in India. They do not need more complexity. They need infrastructure that works. Someone needs to build that infrastructure. Not from a boardroom. From the field. 9. Why This Work Matters Over the last year, I have spent more time in broker offices, dealership back rooms, and PoSP training centers than anywhere else. Insurance intermediaries have become my second family. I have watched them work. I have felt their frustration. I have seen what breaks and what works. Most insurance tech is built by people who have never sat with a rural agent struggling with a Hindi language portal, or a broker juggling 12 insurer logins before 10 AM, or a dealership executive manually typing VIN numbers into five different systems. The future of this industry will not be built by those who think they know better. It will be built by those who listened better. Infrastructure that is fully AI powered and yet affordable. Built for Rural Bharat as well as Urban India. Built from lived experience, not projected assumptions. This is not a product thesis. This is a commitment to an entire ecosystem. 10. Conclusion If India wants deeper insurance penetration, the answer is not to replace intermediaries. The answer is to empower them. The country does not need more dashboards, more portals, or more complexity. It needs one operating system that works for agents, brokers, PoSP networks, dealerships, aggregators, embedded partners, IMFs and corporate channels. The future of Indian insurance depends on distribution. Distribution depends on infrastructure. That infrastructure is being built. Quietly. Deliberately. One intermediary at a time. Written by Advith Sharma Co-Founder, AetherLabs