Reliance Life Insurance has launched life insurance policies in electronic demat form across all its products.
This initiative follows the inauguration of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority's Insurance Repository System by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in Hyderabad last week to enable and encourage policy holders to hold their insurance policies in demat form.
Reliance Life Insurance is among the first few private insurers to offer policy holders the option to hold their insurance policies in electronic demat form.
“We are happy to announce the launch of our policies in electronic form for our customers. This green initiative is aimed at complementing the regulator’s efforts to save hundreds of crores spent on printing, dispatching and storing insurance policies by the industry. This initiative will make it easier for the customers to buy and monitor multiple life insurance policies in a single demat account,” said Anup Rau, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Reliance Life Insurance.
E-Insurance Account
As per the process, a policy holder can choose to open an E-Insurance Account with any one of the five approved insurance repositories by providing their (KYC) documents, which include address and identity proof etc.
Thereafter, the policy holder would be allotted a unique EI Account number and will have the choice to dematerialise the existing policies in the EI Account.
Insurance repositories
IRDA has approved five companies — Database Management Ltd, Central Insurance Repository Ltd, SHCIL Projects Ltd, CAMS Repository Services Ltd and Karvy Insurance Ltd — as insurance repositories.
“The electronic insurance account will eliminate repetitive KYC requirements and provide one view of policies, premium paid and claim history and nominee details and bring in all the benefits of demat to the life insurance business, including automatic reminders for premium,” Rau said.
Reliance Life Insurance would encourage its over nine million customers to convert their insurance policies from physical format to demat form. The novel system will also undertake changes, modifications and revisions in the insurance policy with speed and accuracy.
“Dematerialisation of policies will bring greater transparency and convenience to customers and it will also help reduce cost in issuing and maintaining life insurance policies. More importantly, it will also ease the problem of customer-contactability, which is a huge challenge faced by the industry,” he added.