Reliance Life launches e-insurance policies

Policyholder can choose to open an e-Insurance account with any one of the five approved insurance repositories by providing their KYC documents

Reliance Life Insurance Co has announced the launch of life insurance policies in electronic demat form across all its products. This initiative follows the inauguration of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda)’s Insurance Repository System (IRS) by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in Hyderabad last week to enable and encourage policyholders to hold their insurance policies in 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 Chief Executive Officer Anup Rau .

In line with the process, a policyholder can choose to open an e-Insurance (EI) account with any one of the five approved insurance repositories by providing their KYC (know your customer) documents, which include address and identity proof. Thereafter, the policyholder would be allotted a unique EI account number and will have the choice to dematerialise existing policies in the EI account.

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 (IR).

Reliance Life Insurance said it 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,” added Rau.