Relieving the pain

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), in a recent circular, said that absolute data released by companies were meaningless and did not lend themselves to proper comparison and analysis as the numbers involved were contingent upon several factors, such as age of the insurer, the size of the insurer, the number of policyholders and the number of claims registered.

“Analysis of data relating to grievances becomes more meaningful when the grievances are correlated to policy servicing parameters or claims related parameters as may be the case,” said the Irda circular.

Towards this objective, the regulator has revised forms L41 and NL41 where the insurers make their periodic disclosures to the public. Among other things, the insurers will now have to give a break-up of all complaints made by customers — related to proposal, claim, policy, premium, refund, coverage, cover note and products.

Currently, companies make disclosures of complaints made by customers under heads like sales related, new business, policy servicing and claim servicing. Moreover, insurers will now have to make disclosures on duration-wise pending status, such as up to seven days, 7-15 days, 15-30 days, 30-90 days, 90 days and beyond.

Analysts say such detailed disclosures will make it easier for customers to do an analysis and go for an insurer that suits them the best.

In fact,

... contd.