In the insurance business, it is common knowledge that you have to pay premium on your policy in time as per the terms of your policy. If the premium paid is unnecessarily delayed, then your policy may lapse. According to the CII - EY report on the insurance business, “usually less than half the policies sold survive beyond the second policy year.” This is particularly true with the life insurance business, the report notes.

Lakshmi S (not her real name) had bought a policy under the name of her new-born child from a leading Indian public sector life insurance provider. She was regularly paying the premium until one year when due to some personal matters at home, she missed paying the premium on a couple of occasions. By the time she realised her folly, the policy had lapsed. She made a dash to the insurance office in her locality only to be told that she would have to submit the documents for revival at an office in another part of the city. Her house was 50 km away from the office and she would have to take a day off from work to finish the task.

On reaching South Mumbai, the location of the company’s branch office from where the policy had originated, she found that in that particular locality, there were offices of the insurance company in every street corner. At one such office, after standing in a queue for about 15 minutes, she was told that the branch office she was looking for was across the road.

The journey did not end there. After a 10-minute wait at the second branch, she was told that the office was in the next block about 10 buildings away. When she finally reached the desired insurance branch office, Lakshmi was told that the cash counter had closed for the day. The insurance executive could have checked if Lakshmi’s papers were in order. But she was given the lame public sector excuse: “When you come to pay the money at a later date, I will have to repeat the process”.

The next day, she sent her brother with the papers. The clerk looked at the papers and asked her brother, “Are you an agent?” When he replied in the negative, she said that Lakshmi would have to take a medical test with a doctor empanelled with the insurance company and then come back with the certificate.

Finding a doctor on the panel was not an easy task either. When everything seems to be online these days, in some cases, the doctors on the panel had wrong telephone numbers online or it had the wrong address. In one instance, when Lakshmi reached the spot which was supposed to be a doctor’s clinic according to the digital medium, it was a slaughter house. Another doctor she managed to reach had exhausted the company’s health certificate pad. She would have to wait till the certificate arrived. In that interim, the late fee had increased once more.

Agent, anyone? Finally, she got her medical check and her brother reached the insurance office with all the documents. The earlier clerk had gone for probably much-needed, training. The replacement in her desk looked at the papers and said that a document for premium waiver benefits had to be filled. Till then, the policy papers would not be processed. Ruffled by this behaviour, her brother decided to approach the branch manager, to ask one single question, “Why could they not ask for all the required documents at one go?” The branch manager agreed, but said due process would have to be followed and hence one more trip to the branch would need to be undertaken.

When Lakshmi’s brother asked if they were being taken for granted only because they were approaching the company as individual customers and not through an agent, the branch manager was quick to respond, “If you want I can put you in touch with our company’s agents. You can choose from our large network.” The issue is yet to be resolved.

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