Insurance policy document to go digital in 2014

Insurance policy document will become digital and paperless like shares in the coming year and the policyholders would be saved from preserving the physical copies of their insurance policies.

From April onwards, policy document would come in electronic form for all the new insurance policy sold.

Over 25 crore policy holders owning close to 37 crore policies would get their e-insurance in phased manner, CAMS Repository Services Ltd CEO S V Ramanan said.

The Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) is likely to announce the roadmap to make it mandatory, by which insurance companies would have to compulsorily issue policies to their customers only in electronic form, he said.

According to an estimates, the current cost to insurer to service policies is over Rs 600 per annum per policy.

However, with insurance repository, the initial incidental cost would come down to less than Rs 100

per annum per policy, he said, adding, the initiative shall benefit both policy holders and insurance companies from convenience and cost front.

"We have initiated multi-level programme for educating policy-holders on e-Insurance across India leveraging our huge network of 390 branches and our domain expertise in insurance," he said.

"Insurance policyholders would have the option to access their insurance policies online by opening an insurance account in the electronic form, free of cost. The benefits for policyholder holding an e-insurance are safety, convenience, service on demand, single KYC and aggregate view of all policies," he said.

Insurance repository system allows policy holders to keep insurance policies in electronic form and undertake changes and revision in the policy with speed and accuracy.

Recently, IRDA, permitted five companies to act as repositories: NSDL Database Management, CAMS Repository Services, SHCIL Projects, Central Insurance Repository and Karvy Insurance Repository for managing e-policy.