Bima Sugam to be a game changer for the insurance sector: IRDAI chairman

By making it easy for customers all over the country to get insurance, this tech-driven portal will help increase insurance penetration in the country.

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) chairman Debasish Panda in an interview with PTI said Bima Sugam should be a UPI moment for the insurance industry.

The widespread adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for even minor payments has revolutionized digital payment in the nation.Numerous nations are attempting to duplicate UPI’s rapid success, which has attracted international attention.Payment through UPI, which was introduced in 2016, reached the ₹11 lakh crore milestone in September of this year.

“Bima Sugam will be a one-stop shop for buying and selling insurance, for policy servicing, and also for claim settlement. Insurance companies can onboard the platform. It’s going to be plug and play with API (Application programming interface) interface,” Panda said.

He further said all the insurance intermediaries including individual agents, web aggregators will have access to this portal.

And as far as the policyholder is concerned, he said, he or she will be able to buy the product through assisted mode, or directly. “So maybe many people may prefer the assisted mode and can take the help of one of the intermediaries,” he added.

The policyholder and potential customers will be able to choose from a variety of products, businesses, and payment options on this platform.

“So it’s like a shopping mall. So you go and shop there. And as far as the KYC is concerned, the moment you enter the portal, type your Aadhaar number, the data will auto populate. The KYC will be done through your Aadhaar number which will be masked for security reasons,” he said.

Underwriting of policy would be done through a few easy steps and in a couple of minutes through the portal, he said.

To ensure easy liability servicing, he said, “we are trying to mandate that all the policies should go to insurance repositories who will store details on a permanent basis. It will help in settlement of claims in a paperless manner on the basis of policy number.”

The portal, he added, “will promote ease of living and expand the reach of insurance…this is going to be a game changer. It will be a huge facilitator and I think with this platform you will not need to go anywhere physically.” 

With inputs from PTI