You will now get live updates on your insurance claim, because IRDAI has said so

New Delhi: In order to ease the lives of customers who had to run from pillar to post to settle an insurance claim, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has directed insurance companies to provide live updates to policyholders on their claim settlement. In a circular released on Wednesday, the insurance regulator urged insurance companies to make available a tracking mechanism for policyholders to enable them to know the status of their claims.

Currently, insurers only send details of the claims to the policyholders, status of the claim settlement is not provided to them.

How will the tracking mechanism work?

As soon as a claim is intimated, a unique reference number would be generated for the policyholder and sent to them on their registered mobile number and the email id. The reference number can then be used by them to track the status of their claim through a portal of a website online.

As the settlement progresses, insurance companies will be required to provide updates on the same to the policyholder using the same channels. The final decision on whether a claim has been admitted or rejected and payment details such as through cheque or bank credit will have to be sent to policyholders.

Contact details will be sought at the point of sale

The IRDAI has asked insurers to seek contact details of people both at the point of sale or maybe later during policy servicing. However, it has said that the disclosure of this information is voluntary. It also mandates insurance companies to seek explicit consent from its customers and also not send unsolicited information to customers.

The IRDAI has directed insurers to send alerts via SMS, email or letters for all policy matters, be it policy issuance, acceptance of proposal, renewal or policy lapse.