Boosting Digital Signature Legitimateness for Insurance Industry in India

How to eSign a document: digital signature legitimateness for Insurance Industry in India

and hello and welcome to ncfe's fourth day of this financial literacy week that we have started observing on the 14th that is the last monday till tomorrow that is 18th of february 2022 and most of you will know those who have attended the last three webinars uh the last preceding three days the overall theme is go digital and go secure and today we have the webinar on the insurance sector yesterday we had the pension there before we had the banking and then we had the inaugural webinar today we have the another important sector which is the insurance sector and today's national webinar is on that and to address all of us who can be better other than the chief cell manager and the director of ncap herself she has kindly consented to address uh the webinar today simati ignore madam we appreciate your joining us madam we know how valuable your time is and in spite of that you have agreed to come and address us she is uh not only the chief general manager of irdi and heading the non-life sector she is a post graduate in sociology and is a fellow of the insurance institute of india and she has more than 35 years of service in this sector so you can know she has put her eyes and ears into the ground and she knows everything about this insurance sector and under her leadership only the insurance the awareness campaign has seen an upsurge and the campaign that iidi is doing in the all the media are really praiseworthy madam we have participants from a diverse sector from the school children some of the schools are going live on their auditorium they are connected and then we have those uh our resource person savings resource person the flc's the financial literacy center in charges then the principals and the school teachers the very diverse crowd and the of course most important representatives from the insurance industry that sector so [Music] the topic for today is let me again it is all before you on the screen but using digital technology for the growth of insurance sector and who could be better than the iadi insurance regulatory development authority of india itself and we once again thank you madam for kindly consenting to address us over to you i don't want to take much time over to you ignore prayer madam thank you very much just for a second if you are willing we can take few questions on the chat box if they are coming just a few not many the other questions we will address through our mail and all few important questions if you agree at the end of your session we can from the chat box if anything is there we will post sure if i miss seeing them while i'm speaking i would request you to post them to me at the end of the session yeah yeah i will at the end of your session only we will not right thank you thank you very much uh mr vivee good morning and it's a great pleasure to interact with all of you through the platform of the national center for financial education and on behalf of ncfe and the insurance regulatory and development authority of india i extend a very warm welcome to all of you i hope all of you have been finding the activities of the financial literacy week useful today's topic as you know is using technology for the growth of the insurance sector and while discussing this topic it is important to set a context to it the development of any sector depends on the speed efficiency and transparency involved in services so services should be you know required by people people should be happy with that the end goal is to satisfy the customer so you want people to come back again and again and find the service that you offer useful when you look at the insurance sector it's a huge sector and they've been growing well the last financial year the growth rate was eight percent and the premium volumes are looking at is over six lakh twenty two thousand crore but when you look at the country as a whole and you look at you know the gdp of the country there is something called penetration which we normally talk about in insurance parliaments which basically reflects how well the country is protected you know by insurance so the penetration level in our country is 4.2 percent and which doesn't compare very well with the world average which is you know 7.2 percent and therefore we know that there is a lot of scope for protection how you link the growth of insurance sector to better protection levels is the more the sector develops the more the penetration increases you know that society and economy is protected better i just mentioned that a service is good or bad based on whether you know it is efficient it is pd and whether there is transparency what better methodology to facilitate this than digitalization so like in all other sectors digitalization has you know uh the insurance sector too has seen a lot of digitalization and it has brought in efficiencies but along with efficiencies you know there are also certain gaps or loopholes that come in which are really important from the customer point of view i would not be exaggerating if i mentioned that insurance is the most complex of financial services what you are buying when you go to buy an insurance policy is basically a promise a promise that should a particular contingency arise or certain contingency arrive certain contingencies arise in the future you will be paid a claim that you make now the claim may be in the form of a benefit it could be in the form of a compensation it could be in the form of a reimbursement for end of the day you're buying something which is intangible and that makes the insurance service all the more complex so uh you know let's have a quick look at the insurance canvas that is studied it's really important to understand the entire gamut of the insurance sector so we're looking at risk carriers that means insurance companies so when we buy a policy we are transferring our risk to the insurance companies so we have over 57 companies today we also have reinsurance branches reinsurance is a concept where just like you and i go and buy insurance from an insurance company insurance companies themselves go to reinsurers to protect their balance sheets the entire concept of insurance revolves around the spread of risk so the larger the numbers you know the better it is uh for the sector and the lower the prices and we are also looking at several intermediaries or involved agents and intermediaries or involved in the distribution part of insurance so the network or the canvas is pretty complex and the number of policies for instance that have been issued you know is 57 crore and when i talk of the insurance sector and i talk of the size of the sector 75 percent of the premium volume comes from the life insurance sector rest of it comes from health and general insurance apart from your traditional agents i'm sure all of you would have heard of you know i'm talking especially addressing the young children in the school about insurance agents you know who actually try probably are in touch with your parents to sell a policy or you know service the policies so over the years uh many new distribution channels have come up so we have insurance brokers we have insurance marketing firms we have corporate agents or entities who run agencies but they are not individuals so with more and more touch points coming into the picture and with the online facility also available the entire thing becomes very complex for a common man to really understand as to how he or she should go about buying an insurance policy even when you look at agents or you look at brokers you know you may not be interacting directly with them you will be interrupt interacting through technology at least in the beginning so i'm now going to basically having set a context i i'm going to talk about three things today one is let us understand what the insurance value chain is i will try to keep it as simple as possible keeping the you know variety of audience review and then what is the role of the insurance regulatory and development authority of india as a regulator how does a regulator keep pace with technology and last but not the least i'd like to touch upon the customer's perspective that is really important especially in the context of a complex you know financial service that i'm talking about so let's look at what is the life cycle of an insurance policy i'm going to keep it as simple as possible in a layman's language so let's say i want to now look at whether i need insurance protection for myself so i first want to understand what are my needs what kind of insurance do i need and for that i also need to know what kind of insurance products are available in the market so the gamut of insurance is huge you have life insurance you have health insurance and in general insurance you have insurance of property insurance of liability to give you simple examples if i want to insure my house i am ensuring it's a property insurance if all of us know that vehicles cannot be applied on the road without a mandatory motor third party insurance so if i'm taking a motor third party insurance it is a liability tension so first i need to understand that i have to take a motor third party insurance if i'm owning a vehicle because it is mandatory as per law next i know that i want to protect my family in the event of any unfortunate event of my death or my disability so i would like to take a life insurance policy i know that health expenses are huge today i would like to take a health insurance policy so in today's digital world you know that there is basically information available all over so i need to first understand what kind of information i should be looking for and where i should be looking for so i would like to now let's say take a life insurance policy i first need to know what are the products that are available so i start looking for information see there are two methods one is i follow the traditional method i contact my agent i can always do that and in a country like ours that has to remain but you have to also bring it more and more online because the kind of development that has taken place in our country i mean i think it is unparalleled and secondly it brings in greater transparency as i said and also speed so especially the new age generation would like everything at the click of a button so i need to understand what is out there in that old net that is available what are the companies that are offering these products what kind of products are available so when so much of information is there i want to see if i can compare not just the price of products but also design of the products so that is where the concept of web aggregators is coming so over the uh a few years ago irda introduced web aggregators they are licensed entities which actually give you comparison on uh you know on a website of different products available so just this look at the use of technology because if i were to contact my traditional agent he might not be knowledgeable about all moreover and agent represents just one company so he will not be in a position to give you a comparison of the products offered by all the companies this is a great boon to us because of technology secondly let's say i have we call this as a proposal state so i have decided to take a policy i fill up the proposal form i can fill it up online today i don't need my agent to come and give me a proposal form and fill it up physically so i fill it up online i submit it online and once the insurer receives it the insurer is also able to you know assess the risk definitely through use of technology for example if i have you know communicated that i am hypertensive and i am diabetic then they have enough data relating to morbidity and mortality all of which you know they have basically used id tools like data mining use of big data and everything and they know that yes if these are the risk factors this is probably what i should be pricing my product so they have insurers are able to use technology to assess a risk better and then they decide to issue me a policy and they can do it online today i mean i can buy a policy online so i get a policy through email or you know i will come a little later to that we also have insurance repositories so having bought a policy let me come to the next i'm i'm just going stage by stage through the product life setting i need certain servicing i have changed uh let's say there is a certain health condition which i want to reveal because remember insurance is based on atmosphere when i fill up the proposal form i am supposed to be very honest about whatever questions i'm answering if there is a question whether i am hypertensive if i am i have to say yes because if i say no then you know it's incorrect and my claim is going to be prejudiced so when i when i uh suppose i need a change and i want to declare something to the insurance company i can again you know do it online so i can access my particular account declare these details the insurance company will basically update uh you know the policy so everything is happening online i don't have to meet with my agent or you know any intermediary to do this and let's say there's an unfortunate event and a claim arises under the policy i'll now slightly shift i started with the life example but to give you a better idea of you know use of technology in claims i will shift to general insurance so in general insurance if i have insured my house you know if i have taken it's a property insurance it probably would need a surveyor you know surveyors are licensed individuals or entities so when there is a physical lost property the insurance company will appoint a surveyor to come and assess the loss and see the extent of damages so nothing better than technology for that today in fact during the corvette a lot of uh you know a small uh losses were surveyed so basically uh either the surveyor uh you know so what happens is it's a very small loss the customer himself or herself can take a video of that and upload it uh you know on the insurance features website and a survey who's an expert will have a look at that or the surveyor also in fact you know in jurisdictions abroad and that is happening now in crop insurance in some parts of the country drones are used to assess losses physical losses so here is a great example of how you know technology can be used uh you know for survey and last but not the least if i'm a dissatisfied customer and i want to complain to the insurance you know company then i can lodge a complaint online so uh all insurance companies have to have online facilities for capture of complaint and also disposal so i just wanted to give you a brief idea of how technology can play a role and i have just touched you know i've just came through it because it's a very very detailed subject but end of the day there is a role for technology in every stage of insurance and what kind of technologies involved several like you know use of digital platforms and use of internet of things i'd like to give you an example there when you come to policy design for example how technology can be used uh i'm not sure if all of you have heard of the concept of telematics so telematics basically uses a device you know which is fixed to the car and the driving habits and uh you know whether the car is being driven what kind of terrain it is being driven is it being driven fast is it being driven slow etc can be captured through the device so these help the insurance company have a better idea of the risk they are getting into and they know how to price it and not only that with better monitoring you know the risk of having a loss is also reduced so nowadays you have internet of things like telematics for cars or you have variables you know so both for life insurance and health insurance i'm sure many of us must be wearing that where we are trying to see whether we have completed 10 000 steps or i think today the norm is 7 000 or whatever so variables and you also have you know patches which will indicate your sugar level so uh with the use of variables it is easier for insurers to basically assess risk and it's also good for the customer because if the customer is keeping uh you know those things in check then he or she will get a better price because if the uh and or the you know the likelihood of hospitalization or any medical treatment is certainly reduced having said that these are all the numerous possibilities that are there when it comes to you know digitalization and insurance i would like to give you the regulatory perspective so it's important in that the regulator keeps space with what is happening and why would the regulator have to do that because end of the day the interests of the policyholders or the customers has to be born and ready so the irdi has taken a lot of initiatives one thing which i alluded to earlier was the insurance repository so you know irdi approves repo repositories and policy holders or customers can actually store their policies so you need to open an account you can either approach your insurer directly or you can ask you know your agent or you can even approach through the repositories so open an account store your policies there also get your servicing done in terms of policy servicing to uh you know whatever extent it was possible for example obviously through the repository a claim servicing is not possible but policy servicing is positive if you need changes to your policy etcetera so this is i think an aspect which i really wanted to publicize because today we must make use of this it is something similar to your digi locker but a little more than that because you also get certain servicing advantages now talking of e-commerce that has become the norm of the day and especially in the pandemic scenario we we all you know how important technology and you know the whole cyber world became to us so iida i also ramped up and facilitated insurance companies to go more digital and permitted certain things like you know actually using digital signatures for policies etc otherwise in in our framework it's important to basically give a written proposal but all of that all of those steps were taken by iidai because it was important that we ensure that people get protection one thing is about insurance companies being able to carry on their business but why because giving insurance protection especially health insurance and life insurance became all the more important during the pandemic that's when e-commerce really came into use and you know a lot of policyholders benefited why do we keep an oversight about on e-commerce again in the interest of holders so we make sure that there is data integrity there is privacy and the confidentiality issues are all you know taken care of and of course if you want to pay your premium you can use any payment mechanism which the rbi basically permits another important initiative is the regulatory sandbox uh the other day if you listen to heard the banking thing i did hear uh you know madam and the cgm there talk about the regulated sandbox initiative in banking similar to that we have uh uh [Music] idea has taken the regulatory sandbox initiative and we already have had two cohorts wherein more than you know 100 applications have been examined and a lot of them have been approved they have to do as i mentioned with policy design for example we did get applications relating to use of telematics and motor currently something which is not there in our jurisdiction but insurance companies have carried out experiments and found that it is really useful for the customer and therefore we want to bring it finally into the framework so uh iidi has promoted the insurance information bureau of india which fundamentally collects data from all the insurance companies and this data is also now i'm coming to the aspect of fraud now frauds is something you know the insurance industry is quite vulnerable to and this kind of capture of data and mining of data and analysis and fraud analytics would really give pointers to the industry as to where they need to be careful because end of the day we don't want any outgo of you know the the money towards fraudulent claims because it actually would then reflect as higher prices for the individuals now i will we have about eight minutes and let me quickly move to the customer perspective because i i want to make tell you that yes digitalization is important it is important to automate because it gives us efficiencies it gives us speed but while we do that we don't know that we are opening ourselves or you know exposing ourselves to new issues or new concerns it is equally or more important to handle that as we go along so again i'm going to uh you know go through the life cycle product and tell at each stage what is to be done so if i have decided at the proposal stage that is where i decide that i want to buy a policy i must look for credibility of the sellers i mean i'm just not talking of you know uh approaching a licensed agent or anything i'm talking about what i'm looking at on the net so am i am i sure that this is a credible website once i have ascertained that i must give information which is basically necessary and not more and not less and i need to be honest secondly when it comes to know your customer information or i must make sure of to prove my identity or whatever i must make sure i give only information that is required i it might seem cliche but i must mention that whatever precautions we need to take whenever do we are doing any transaction on the net we need to take over here too having strong passwords avoiding websites which are not starting with https and you know we need to be very aware or be aware of suspicious and spurious identities in fact uh what is happening today is leave alone the net or leave alone you know going through a web app or mobile app and getting cheated there are people who actually call upon your number they're spurious callers call you and they say somehow they have some information from some stolen database and they come to you and say that you know i know you hold a policy blah blah blah and if you deposit two lakhs or three lakhs with me you are actually going to get back much more than what you invested so this is an initial fee that you have to pay and things like that i have come across instances of highly educated people also getting taken in by such calls and it's very important for us to guard ourselves against that and uh so when like when it comes to you know claims processing again as i said everything can be done digital for smaller claims in particular so you can actually you know there are instances where you can upload your documents and get the claim processed online but while you're doing that please ensure that you have provided only details which are necessary sometimes you know we might become lazy and without calling out information we just okay you know tell someone just upload all these documents so let's not do that we have to be very clear what is the information called for what is that we are actually giving and then please do protect yourselves against phishing and suspicious communications for example if i have applied for something and i know i have given my name instead of saying dear jagna priya so and so so so if they just say oh dear you know customer or anything generic you must be uh you're a bit suspicious you must try and understand that it might be just coming from some suspicious source so uh while i've been talking about rights as a customer when it comes to you know cyber transactions we must all we also have certain duties i must bear in mind that i must engage in appropriate behavior when i am dealing with online things uh so i should not resort to cyberbully or you know sometimes spamming of emails so those kind of things we also have to behave responsibly when we do that so there are n number of possibilities when it comes to digitalization and the insurance sector yes it is linked to growth of the insurance sector because if i talk of a more developed insurance sector i'm actually referring to a more developed society and a better protected economy so for me the protection gap comes down if i'm talking of growth of the insurance sector and while we grow we need to grow sensibly we need to grow carefully we need to adopt technology that is relevant and we need to ensure that you know there are no concerns relating to privacy confidentiality and things like that so uh i'm going to leave four minutes for questions uh if there is anything end of the day i i believe it digitalization in the insurance sector is very useful for citizens and but please remember it is a means to an end and it is not an end in itself so uh thank you very much and uh over to you mr vivedi regarding questions thank you madam thank you so much before we formally close a couple of questions are there i can see in the chat box um mrs supriya she would like to know if someone had taken tom insurance how he can sign up marriage women property act benefit okay so i am not from the life insurance space and i cannot answer that specific question but i will note it down and i will get back to you i i basically handled the non-life segment and uh you know i'm just here talking about how digitization can help in a generic way but uh i have noted your question and otherwise i would suggest you go to the iida website and you know send an email so that you can get a response yeah sure madam we also advise them that we will also compile all the questions which cannot be answered everything cannot be answered in this platform we'll compile and get to the feedback from uh iiti and uh give them the reply that also we will do so that no worry and the second thing she would like to know could we provide some contact details of depository service providers where it is available probably certainly they are available on the idea website but if you send a mail we can respond to that as well okay uh then doctor agarwal while he has appreciated uh it's a very nice session and he is appreciating that he is a very fundamental question i don't know why insurance sector in india is divided into two parts life and non-life well it's not just in india it is uh you know so everywhere in the world uh so some anything you look at you know it will have its own peculiarities so when you deal with the life insurance there are certain principles which are slightly different from general insurance i'll give you a basic quick example so life cannot be valued if i want to ensure my life let's say for one crow i mean it's just a rough estimate if the insurance company based on my income permits me that some some assured but i can't really put a value to my life whereas it is different if you're looking at this mobile phone that i have it has a value i know how much i bought it for so i cannot insure it for more let's say i bought it for 50 000 i cannot insure it for uh one lakh so this is called the principle of indemnity which applies for general insurance but doesn't for life so based on these basic principles there is a bifurcation okay thank you we can take the last i think madam if time permits i think we are just a few seconds left uh from uh because sharma he would like to know is a near future physical services trend will shrink due to digital development so i would like to put it the other way in a positive way i would like to say online services will increase and given the kind of country you know ours is and the protection gap that i've been talking about we want both traditional that is physical and online to increase until we reach the target where everybody is well protected so i don't want to see a reduction in physical i want to see an increase in both okay nicely put madam i think we will close formally that any other queries which is coming we will try and get the clarification from you and answer the participants there is one from asmita if you can just take that whether the insurance company have made to met with any loss at this time of pandemic then i don't think there's a yeah no no i can mention uh definitely the outgos and health insurance have increased uh you know because of the covet related claims that have been paid uh yeah so that's what insurance is all about uh you know you don't know when what will happen and when it happens uh the they will have to pay thank you so much madam now i think i will request viraj to propose a formal vote of thanks viraj are you there thank you everyone thank you sir first of all it's a great honor to offer vote of thanks on this special occasion it was indeed a very interesting session uh we all have received great insights about insurance sector in india also about the various product that you are offering and the various initiatives like the sandbox initiative that is taken for betterment of the user's users interface and on behalf of my entire team i extend sincere thanks to respected ignatia bharat mam chief general manager insurance regulatory and development authority of india and the director ncfe who despite busy schedule kindly consented to grace the occasion and became a part of this event thank you ma'am we also convey a special thanks the resource persons financial literacy counselors financial education trainers college principals professors students and the insurance uh companies representatives who have attended the sessions and everyone who have participated in various digital mode further we would like to say that ncfe is also conducting national level financial literacy quiz for college students so here i would like uh all our college students to uh participate and uh claim the various prizes that we are offering and it is it is uh death in 18th of pen also we are happy to say that digital financial services day is also observed tomorrow in financial literacy week and for more details you can log in to ncfe.org.in you can also follow our youtube channel and various social media handles like linkedin twitter instagram and once again i would like to thank all our participants it was a great pleasure to be your host and uh have a great day ahead thank you all thank you madam thank you once again yeah thank you very much to everybody especially the little school children thank you you