Insurance Information Bureau plans central data base of insurance agents

Move to help individual companies in having a background check of intermediaries before engaging them

Insurance agents misselling and remaining unnoticed with will soon become a thing of the past as the regulator plans to keep a check on their background.

On the lines of credit bureau, the Insurance Information Bureau (IIB) of India has decided to prepare a central database of the insurance intermediaries to help individual companies to have some background check of those before engaging them.

"The industry has been asking for a central record of the third parties for life and non-life insurance businesses. We are looking at the aspect and would seek the regulator's nod for such a database," IIB CEO Kunnel Prem said here on the sidelines of an Assocham organised insurance conclave today.

"This data will help the industry while listing third parties. In future there could be a caution list from our end," he said.

Right now the project is in a formative stage.

Intermediaries include individual and corporate agents, TPA in health insurance, investigators in claims.

There are complaints against many third party entities but they get engaged with other companies once restricted or blacklisted due to malpractices with the erstwhile companies.

"Such blacklisting happens at the company level. There are all the possibility that this information of blacklisting is not available to other insurance companies," Prem said.

Speaking about health sector, he said that Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance has a portal which offers common registration of clinical establishments which are in the network of insurance.

"Out of 35,000 in the country, as many as 12,800 clinical establishments are registered with the portal. The registration process is on. Later, we will do analytics after collecting the information," he added.