Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) has asked all life insurance companies to compile and file data of all the policies of which the premiums are awaited.

This, according to experts, is a prelude to the disclosure norms that the Irda wants insurance companies to make public.

The authority has asked life insurance companies to file data on all the policies where the premium are aw aited till the next premium due date. For example, in case of policies where the premiums are paid every quarter, the insurance companies have to give data of all such policies where premiums are due for more th an a quarter, says Irda.

"The regulator expects much more transparency among the insurers and hence this is a big step to wards drawing the road map towards the disclosure norms awaited anytime so on,"said Ravi Trivedy, executive director, KPMG. Though Trivedy clarifies that disclosures are much more than the data on the lapsed policies.

"Disclosures include lot of things such as persistency ratio, various costs, commissions to agents, holding so on and so forth," he said.

According to the circular released by Irda on Tuesday, the disclosures will have to be made categorically as per policies, where the premium is awaited, being unit-linked, non-linked, number of policies, total premium unpaid and wh ether the policies are individual or non-single premium type.

"These disclosures will give an idea towards the quality of the book the insurer is having and also provide some indication of the persistency,"Paresh Parasnis, principal officer, HDFC Standard Life said.

As life insurance companies saw their growth in premium dwindle year on year in 2008-09, they saw an increased number of policies not being renewed at the same time. The lapsations of the life insurance policies across the industry were at an average of 35 percent.

The insurance regulator has asked the companies to file the data for the year that went by (financial year 2009) by the month-end. As lot of companies don't have data in for the same and will have to cull it from their database, the companies are likely to ask for an extension in deadline.