The insurance companies deny it, but mis-selling of life insurance policies is a routine practice. From Dec 1, all this will hopefully be a thing of the past as the new customer-centric guidelines of the regulatory body become operational

We have already established the fact that AI will certainly play a key role in transforming the future of Indian financial services. With various fintech business models in place, BFSI industry is now adopting the AI-based fintech solutions at a much larger scale than ever.

Most of us keep our gold and valuable items in bank lockers thinking that it is safer to keep there than at home. The probability of theft is much lower in case of banks as compared to a house but did you know that banks bear no responsibility for the contents kept in the locker as they are not aware of the contents of the locker? Suddenly you may no longer feel comfortable leaving your jewellery in a locker but the fact is bank lockers are definitely a much safer option but the safest would be to insure the contents.

Though per-authorization has become quicker, claims settlement at the time of discharge could be a long and cumbersome process. Been at the hospital for a couple of days and now that you are fit, you crave home food and comfort. The doctor comes on a round and declares you fit for discharge and so you pack your bags thinking you will be able to walk out of the hospital the very next minute. But then the hospital staff tells you to have patience and that’s what you lose every single minute as you see your family running around to get the bills cleared. It’s now evening and you are still stuck because your health insurance claim has not been cleared and the hospital won’t discharge you unless the insurer signs off on the bills. This is not an aberration, but a common experience among the insured patients who make cashless claims.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has put health insurers on a deadline to standardize exclusions, diseases or medical conditions that are not covered under a policy. According to an Irdai circular, issued on 27 September, insurers filing new products will have to comply with the guidelines—the draft was released in May 2019—with immediate effect. For existing products, Irdai has given insurers time till 1 October 2020. “Previously, there was no transparency about the claims that could be rejected. However, the regulator has now pre-defined all diseases against which claims can be rejected," said Indraneel Chatterjee, co-founder and principal officer, RenewBuy.com, a digital insurance company.

A broad-based outlook of the Indian insurance sector reveals two fundamental trends. First, the traditional prominence of insurance agents, who play the vital role of handholding consumers throughout their policy life-cycle. Second, the all-pervading impact of digitalization as a market force that is reshaping how consumers engage with the sector and their insurance policies.

Breaking traffic rules may affect your motor insurance premiums. Once this rule comes into effect, even the smallest of violations could affect the premiums. Soon you won’t just get away by paying a fine when you violate a traffic rule; it will also have a bearing on your motor insurance premium. About a week after the government implemented the Motor Vehicles Act, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) formed a nine-member working committee to examine linking premiums with traffic violations.

If you receive a message ‘Now you can be fined Rs 2,000 and/or put in jail for up to 3 months for driving an uninsured vehicle. Get insured now!’ on your mobile phone, don’t get surprised or assume that it is from traffic police or law enforcement agencies. Digital insurance platforms or online insurance service providers are sending these types of messages and mailers to potential customers. According to industry estimates, around 75-80% of two-wheelers (nearly 1 crore) and 15-20% of four-wheelers are uninsured in Punjab and Haryana, despite motor insurance being mandatory under the law. With the implementation of Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, the digital insurance providers have added more thrust to marketing by communicating to existing and potential customers in the region through different mediums such as SMSes/mailers, digital contents and blogs on road safety issues.

RenewBuy, a digital insurance broker, wants to ramp up its multi-company digital agency force to two lakh over the next three years, said its Chief Executive Officer Balachander Sekhar. This insurance-tech company now has 27,000 agents in 450 cities. Sekhar told BusinessLine here that the company intends to cover 1,000 cities with digital agency force of about one lakh in two to three years. RenewBuy has an unique business model that is based on multi-company agency force using ‘point of sale’ terminals and is challenging the entire single company-tied agency model.

Insurance broking firm RenewBuy is targeting a premium of Rs 800 crore in FY20. The digital insurance platform that specializes in motor insurance apart from products like health, has recently raised Rs 130 crore of Series B funding and wrote Rs 300 crore business in FY19.