New Delhi (NVI): The Insurance Regulatory Authority of India (IRDAI) has advised all insurance companies to issue Digital Insurance Policies through DigiLocker, to minimise the use of physical documents and enhance effectiveness of service delivery.
In a statement, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology said that, IRDAI in a circular dated February 9, 2021, advised all Insurance companies for issuance of Digital Insurance Policies via DigiLocker.”
The circular states, “In order to promote the adoption of Digilocker in the insurance sector, the authority advises all insurers to enable their IT systems to interact with Digilocker facility to enable policyholders to use digilocker for preserving all their policy documents.”
It also mentioned that the insurers should inform their retail policyholders about Digilocker and how to use it. Insurers are further advised to enable the process by which the policyholders can place their policies in the digilocker.
The DigiLocker team in National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under Ministry of Electronics & IT will provide necessary technical guidance and logistic support to facilitate adoption of Digilocker.
In addition, the ministry stated that, “Digilocker is an initiative under the Digital India program where citizens can get authentic documents or certificate in digital format from original issuers of these certificates.”
It aims at eliminating or minimising the use of physical documents and will enhance effectiveness of service delivery, making these hassle free and friendly for the citizens.
Moreover, Digilocker will drive reduction in costs, elimination of customer complaints relating to non-delivery of policy copy, improved turn around time of insurance services, faster claims processing.
Also, settlement, reduction in disputes, reduction in fraud and improvement in customer contactability, the ministry said, adding that, “On the whole it is expected that will lead to better customer experience.”
The decision of IRDAI came in backdrop of a letter written by Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State for Electronics & IT to Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance with regards to issuance of digital insurance policies to citizen’s DigiLocker accounts.
In the letter, Dhotre requested Thakur to advise an IRDAI to issue an advisory to all insurance companies to make available the digital Insurance policy of all policy holders via their DigiLocker account and acceptance of Digilocker issued documents as valid documents.
“This will provide an alternate channel to access and manage all their insurance policies in a safe and authentic manner and will be of a great value to their customers,” the letter read.
Notably, insurance certificate is an important document for a citizen and his or her family and timely access to insurance certificates can be of critical importance, the statement said. “Thus, providing digital insurance certificates through DigiLocker would be of significant convenience to citizens,” it added.
-RJV
