Kathmandu. A notice requesting the insured to take full and partial term payments is seen on the website of some life insurers. It is not possible to know whether such notices published by the insurers regularly are for them or not.
After collecting the insurance premium from the insured, the insurer is responsible for paying the claim to the insured or the legal heirs under the terms of the insurance. Ironically, instead of fulfilling its responsibility, the insurer has been found to be ritualistically publishing a notice for claim payment only after warning of regulatory action.
More than 1 lakh insureds are associated with a single insurer. Life insurance contracts are not for a couple of years but for a long period of 5 to 30 years. During such a long period, the insured’s residence, family structure, age, memory, and living conditions of the insured have changed. The heir may not be aware of whether a deceased family member had life insurance or not, and even if he did, which insurance company it was with.
There may be insureds who, without understanding life insurance or under someone’s special request or pressure, paid installments through an agent for the first few years but did not receive an insurance contract. How can the insured obtain information about their life insurance when the agent’s contact with such an insured is broken? How can their family members ensure access to such information? The Nepal Insurance Authority or the life insurer does not have an honest answer to these questions.
There is no login facility on the website:
The insurer has a provision to ensure easy access to all details related to the insurance policy through online login to the insured. For this, the insurer should provide both a website and mobile apps. Ironically, the websites of the so-called big and old life insurers do not have a login facility. Even though the option of login is written on the websites of some life insurers, the login page does not open when you click on it. There is no provision in the insurer’s Information Technology Guidance 2076 BS to provide a login facility on the website. Although this guidance does not contain any provision in this regard, the Digital Insurance Policy Guidelines 2024 issued on 2081 Baisakh 7 include a provision to provide online login facility through mobile apps as well as websites.
Recently, the limited login facility in the mobile apps of life insurance companies has made it inconvenient for the insured living abroad. While the number of citizens migrating abroad for foreign employment and higher education is high, those going abroad are deprived of even basic information about their life insurance policies. They are unable to update their details through video KYC like banks, because most life insurers have not even thought about video KYC.
The insured complains that the security arrangements, such as completing the customer identification process, requiring physical presence for this, and having to log in based on the OTP received by entering a mobile number used in Nepal, are more inconvenient than convenient. There is no doubt that the limited facilities in mobile apps are contributing to the increase in the rate of insurance policy lapses. When should the insured pay the insurance installment or insurance loan installment due to busy schedules after going abroad? The memory of how much to pay is lost and eventually the installments become irregular and the benefits have to be deprived.
Some possible solutions:
If you search the websites of the 14 old licensed life insurers, you will not find any details about the insured who are yet to receive claim payments for the full term (maturity) and partial term (partial, survival benefit). Only the foreign life insurer, MetLife (American Life Insurance), has been publishing an updated list with the policy number. The list does not include any details other than the policy number. If the name of the insured could have been included in it, it would have been easier for the insured or the heirs to claim. The rest of the life insurers do not seem to consider this issue very important yet.
If there is a desire to pay a claim that has been pending for years, all life insurers should provide the facility to search for insurance policies on the basis of citizenship number and now for the future national identity card number on their websites and mobile apps. Life insurers include details related to the citizenship of the parents even in children’s insurance policies. Even if there is a change in all circumstances including age, residence, employment, marital status, etc., the citizenship number of an adult person in Nepal does not change.
Measures adopted in India:
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After the amount of money to be claimed by the insured in the neighboring country of India, the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), showed its initiative and suggested some measures for the settlement of claims. Under such a measure, the concerned insured or beneficiary provides all the evidence available to him through video KYC to the information technology system of the life insurer. After meticulously studying the details received in this way, the insurer identifies the insured or beneficiary and issues a notice to contact the nearest branch office and after completing some procedures, pays the amount for the old claim.
