General Awareness (insurance and financial sector focus)
Phase 2 General Awareness is where NIACL AO candidates most often miss the cut-off, because it rewards six months of disciplined current-affairs tracking plus static insurance and banking facts rather than last-minute cramming.
What is asked
- Insurance and financial current affairs: IRDAI regulations and chairperson, insurer IPOs and listings, quarterly results, bank mergers, RBI policy rates and MPC decisions, SEBI measures, NPA and priority-sector data.
- Static insurance: Insurance Act 1938, IRDA Act 1999, LIC Act 1956, GIC and GIC Re, the public-sector general insurers, IRDAI's functions and the Insurance Ombudsman framework.
- Schemes with insurance links: PMJJBY, PMSBY, Atal Pension Yojana, PMFBY, Ayushman Bharat.
- Broad current affairs: appointments, awards, summits, sports, defence exercises, books and state schemes.
- Banking and economy basics: repo, reverse repo, CRR, SLR, MSF, bank nationalisation, Basel III, UPI, RTGS and NEFT.
Worked example
The maximum foreign investment permitted in an Indian insurance company is: the answer is 74%, raised from 49% in 2021, subject to conditions - majority of directors and key management persons must be resident Indians, and a specified share of profits is retained in a general reserve. Remembering the condition, not just the number, defeats trap options such as 100% with IRDAI approval, which applies to insurance intermediaries, not insurers.
Traps
Confusing the 74% insurer cap with the 100% cap for intermediaries and reinsurance branches; treating GIC Re as the old GIC holding company; and picking a scheme's launch year when the question asks for the current cover amount or premium.