Open e-insurance accounts within 15 days of selling policies: Irdai

Irdai has asked insurers to validate OTP permit for opening an e-IA as an alternative to e-signature

All insurers opening electronic-insurance accounts (e-IAs) for policies sold on the self-networking platform (ISNP) have to opening an e-IA within 15 days of a sale, the regulator said.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) issued the clarification after stakeholders raised issues seeking clarity on revised guidelines on insurance repositories and electronic issuance of policies.

The regulator has asked all insurers, insurance intermediaries and insurance repositories to validate one-time password (OTP) permit for opening an e-IA as an alternative to e-signatures. “As per current practice, an e-signature of the holder (e-IA) on the application form for opening an e-IA is considered as a valid authentication,” said Irdai.

Moreover, Irdai has asked all authorities concerned to comply with the know-your-customer/anti-money laundering (KYC/AML) guidelines by using e-KYC facility offered by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Valid KYC documents can also be used in case of insurance e-commerce.

To make things simpler, the authority has allowed opening of e-IA on the basis of either an email id or a mobile number, with only one OTP being sent to the email id or mobile number.

Earlier, the guidelines suggested that insurance e-commerce required creation of e-IA and gave an option to customers to provide an email id or a mobile number. In the revised guidelines, the authority made both mandatory to open e-IA. The insurance repository has to send OTP1 on the registered email id and OTP2 on the registered mobile number of the e-IA holder.