The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has made it mandatory for all life insurance firms to make available the premium rates of all their policies through a premium calculator on their websites for public information.

The directive is aimed at increasing the transparency in the calculation of premiums and facilitating comparison of intra-company and inter-company policies, an IRDA official said.

"We found that some of the agents of life insurers are not explaining the premium calculation, and comparisons thereafter, to the prospective policy holders. The new instructions are targeted at removing this deficiency. Earlier, we gave mild instructions to the insurance firms to incorporate the premium calculators on their websites. But some of them have failed to implement it, hence the new directive," he said.

The regulator will treat the non-incorporation of the calculators as violation of licence conditions on the part of insurers.

It has asked consumers to write to it at irauth@vsnl.com for suitable action, in case they (consumers) do not get this facility from the insurance companies' websites.