Paperless Policies: ‘Challenges exist, but e-insurance accounts seeing 100% growth’

The insurance coverage sector is witnessing a 100 per cent progress year-on-year in new digital insurance coverage accounts (eIA), or dematting of insurance coverage insurance policies within the paperless format. The variety of individuals opening new stockbroking accounts and shopping for insurance coverage insurance policies on-line has soared despite the fact that most workplaces have been non-operational as a result of lockdown within the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.
“I foresee in the near future where most of the policies would be issued only through an e-insurance account and we are working with a few of the larger insurance companies in this direction,” stated Madhusudhan ML, MD & CEO, NSDL Database Management Ltd (NDML), part of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), the nation’s largest securities depository.
The capital market popularised the dematerialisation of shares within the twenty years and immensely benefitted the whole ecosystem together with customers to seamlessly transact. “Similarly, the Irdai has taken the initiative towards the creation of an e-insurance account with an idea to help users easily access and manage their multiple policies,” he informed The Indian Express.
eIA is the portfolio of insurance coverage insurance policies of a policyholder held in an digital kind with an insurance coverage repository (IR). This will assist an eIA holder preserve observe of insurance coverage insurance policies (life in addition to non-life) throughout a number of insurers in a single place. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has allowed 4 entities to hold out IR enterprise: NSDL National Insurance Repository (NIR), CDSL Insurance Repository, KARVI Insurance Repository and CAMS Insurance Repository.
While the advantages of getting an internet account are apparent, some elements are affecting the adoption of eIA in India. “Awareness about the eIA as a product and its benefits takes the top spot as the major factor affecting the adoption. Each stakeholder will have to take a step towards educating their respective customers on the features and benefits of eIA,” Madhusudhan stated.
The different problem that normally comes up is the perceived lack of buyer possession by the distribution ecosystem as issuance of a coverage digitally is seen as one much less alternative to work together with the shopper. “Then is the issue of ‘unless I see a physical copy, the policy is not issued’ kind of uncertainty in minds of customers. While such challenges exist, we see tremendous scope for the concept and are seeing over 100 per cent growth year-on-year in the adoption,” the NSDL chief stated.
He added that Irdai has mandated the issuance of on-line insurance policies by IR and presently all insurance policies bought by insurance coverage corporations’ on-line portals are issued digitally by IRs. “Insurance companies have understood the importance and convenience of eIA and have adopted various strategies to drive adoption. This proactive non-regulatory initiative from a few of the progressive insurance companies has yielded immediate gain in terms of operational efficiencies and reduction in print and dispatch cost.”

H stated all bodily insurance policies might be transformed to digital format and a policyholder can add their present insurance policies held in bodily kind to an eIA. “All a policyholder has to do is open an eIA and share the policy details like policy number and insurer name. This is completely a paperless process for the customer and doesn’t take more than a few minutes. As the insurance policy is issued in electronic form the hassles associated with the processing of claims for physical policies like availability of documents to the nominee, loss in transit, authenticity, mutilated document, etc. are eliminated,” Madhusudhan added.
Currently, 2.9 million prospects handle their insurance coverage insurance policies with NIR. “The eIA helps insurers in saving costs by eliminating the requirement of printing and dispatching the complete policy kit to the customer through physical means either by post or courier. A cost-benefit analysis conducted by NIR for one of the largest insurance players showed a reduction of print and dispatch cost by over 70,” he stated.