Finance Minister P. Chidambaram launches insurance repositories

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram Monday inaugurated sector regulator IRDA's insurance repositories, which will help policy holders keep insurance policies in electronic form and undertake modifications and revisions.

Chidambaram launched the system for individual policy holders as part of efforts to improve services to policy holders and insurance penetration.

The function was held at a hotel at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Secretary, financial services, Rajiv Thakur, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) chairman T.S. Vijayan attended the programme.

Earlier this month, the IRDA gave five companies the status of insurance repositories and provided them with a license valid till July 31, 2014.

The insurers can enter into agreements with one or more repositories.

The companies are Database Management Limited, Central Insurance Repository Limited, SHCIL Projects Limited, CAMS Repository Services Limited and Karvy Insurance Repository Limited.

The objective of creating an insurance repository is to provide policy holders a facility to keep insurance policies in electronic form and to undertake changes, modifications and revisions in the insurance policy with speed and accuracy in order to bring about efficiency, transparency and cost reduction in the issuance and maintenance of insurance policies, said a statement by the IRDA.

Policy holders have an option to choose to either digitise their policy or to have it in the existing format.

The repository will issue a unique code number to all policy holders, and policies of those people will come under that number. It maintains the history of policy details such as claims, nominees, beneficiaries and other data.