General Awareness (insurance and financial awareness)
General Awareness (insurance and financial awareness)
This is the section where a prepared candidate beats a widely-read one. NIACL Assistant expects recent current affairs plus static banking and insurance knowledge - the recruiting company itself, the regulators, the flagship schemes and the standard terminology.
Insurance core
- NIACL is the New India Assurance Company Ltd, founded in 1919, nationalised in 1972 and headquartered in Mumbai; it is India's largest non-life insurer.
- Life insurance was nationalised in 1956, creating LIC; general insurance was nationalised in 1972 through GIC and its four subsidiaries.
- IRDAI, the insurance regulator, was constituted under the IRDA Act, 1999, with headquarters at Hyderabad.
- Section 64VB of the Insurance Act, 1938: an insurer may not assume risk before the premium is received.
- Motor third-party cover is compulsory under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988; PMFBY covers crop loss, while PMJJBY and PMSBY are the low-cost life and accident schemes.
Banking and finance core
- The RBI handles monetary policy - repo, reverse repo, CRR and SLR - and does not regulate insurance or the securities market.
- SEBI regulates markets, PFRDA pensions, NABARD rural credit and NPCI the retail payment rails (UPI, IMPS, RuPay).
- NEFT settles in batches; RTGS is real-time and high-value, with a ₹2 lakh minimum.
Worked example
"Which body regulates premium rates on a marine hull policy?" IRDAI - the product is insurance, so neither the RBI nor SEBI applies.
Traps that cost marks
The commonest errors are swapping the 1956 and 1972 nationalisation years, assuming the RBI regulates everything financial, and relying on undated current-affairs lists that go stale within a month.