Electronic or e-Insurance Accounts

• 10 May 2017 | 1034 Views | By Mint2Save

The world is moving towards using less paper and to electronic records. Now the insurance in India has gone digital. You can also keep all your insurance policy documents in electronic form through one repository system just similar to stocks, mutual funds, and bonds which are kept in De- mat account. An ELA or electronic insurance account gives policyholders to access their life insurance portfolio at a few clicks. In order to encourage such accounts, the opening charges of e-Insurance accounts have totally been waived off.

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has issued separate guidelines for issuance and storage of electronic Insurance policies.

Opening of an e-Insurance Account (eIA)

You can open an e-insurance account directly with the help of any insurance repositories or you can open through an insurer. E- Insurance Account can be open free of charge. There are mainly five insurance repositories to select from:

1. NSDL Database Management Limited
2. SHCIL Projects Limited
3. Karvy Insurance Repository Limited
4. Central Insurance Repository Limited
5. CAMS Repository Services Limited

Even if you want to open the account by an insurer then, at the time when you buy an insurance policy, you can also select to go with one of the above 5 insurance repositories.

The documents required for opening an account are Aadhaar or PAN card, proof and proof of date of birth with a passport size photograph. Once forms are operational, forms would be available in all offices of the Insurance Repository. But it depends upon the repository because it may even ask you to provide your mobile number and email id also. For the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, you may also need to submit proofs when you are buying a policy. The insurer will send these Know Your Customer details to the repository from which you are buying insurance, which will open your account in about three working days. Thus, one should follow these norms to avail an electronic insurance policy:

1. Complete KYC compliance
2. Nomination of legal and natural guardian in the case when a minor is being insured.

The following documents are needed to open an eIA account:

1. PAN Card or Aadhar Card
2. Valid address proof
3. Proof of date of birth
4. Cancelled cheque

As evident from above, KYC holds an important criteria for electronic insurance policies, as there are no other ways to testify customer’s genuinity. When someone wants to change KYC, such as address updation or change of nominee,  he can be advised to follow these steps:

1. Informing the company who issued insurance policy.
2. Fill out a form along with a request letter and proof of KYC document.
3. The insurance company then intimates the regulator and updates the KYC.

When your account gets opened, then you may submit details of your other policies. Then the repository will dematerialize those policies too. Though, at present, this process is not so simple because the insurers are trying to tie-up with all the repositories. So to open an eIA, you need to  fill an account opening application form of the Repository, all along with the important following documents. You can also contact your Insurance Agent for an application form or you can also visit the website. After that you can easily submit the signed e IA application form at any of Insurance Repository offices.

What Types of Insurance Policies can be held Electronically?

As of today, the following insurance policies can be held electronically:

1. Any sort of life insurance policy.
2. Health Insurance Policy
3. General Insurance policies such as that of vehicles, burglary, stock, property etc.

As anyone can observe, e-insurance account will allow you to keep all your insurance policies related to life, health, car and many others at single place.

So, in order to reduce the dependency over insurance agents, you can open an e-insurance account where you will have everything at one place.

Benefits of Online Insurance Policies

What your e-insurance account does? It keeps all your insurance policies electronically under a single e-insurance account and there is no risk of losing the physical insurance policy. e- Insurance will help an individual to easily access their account and also saves time.

It also makes it simple to make changes in all your policies when they are in one folder. For instance, say you want to change the address. So, instead of visiting out to many insurers you can easily update the address in your e-insurance account and changes of your address will automatically update in all your policies.

Benefits of an ELA:

• The Opening of electronic insurance account is totally free.
• There are no more physical policy documents
• You can very easily look and manage all your life insurance policies under a single account, i.e. e IA.
• Once KYC documents are submitted and ELA is opened, KYC documents not required for purchase of new life insurance policies
• If you want to make any changes in contact details or other information it will get auto updated in all your policies across all life insurers quickly.
• Your existing policies can be converted into the electronic format in a very effortless manner.
• The most important benefit of e-Insurance is that all your policy documents are highly secured.
• If you want to check your status of all your documents then you can easily access through one common interface.
• As stated above, you don’t need to contact or visit policy provider’s office as everything would be online

So as to hold e-insurance policies a separate e‐insurance account (EIA) has to be opened with insurance repositories to keep those safe in electronic form.

• An e-insurance account shall be opened by a person who has owned insurance policies or who is advised to take insurance policies
• An e-insurance account can be opened by the legal guardian for a minor, who proposes the life of minor to take a life insurance policy.

Core of e Insurance: iTrex: Insurance Transaction Exchange

This central index server is a database where all the details with respect to eIA are held. The insurers and the insurance repositories can use this database to search for e-insurance account details and access KYC and insurance data.

Along with the aforementioned benefits, iTrex helps insurance companies to check whether one customer has multiple electronic insurance accounts. It is a very lucid and futuristic database that doesn’t require any expertise to be accessed. As of today, over 50 companies are using iTrex to aid their eIA products.