The insurance regulator IRDAI, through the Insurance Transaction Exchange (iTrex) platform, has instructed insurers to upload KYC information of its policyholders. At present, a separate KYC is needed for different insurance policies. For instance, you need KYC when buying health insurance and another one while buying life insurance, which is an irritant for policyholders.

Through the iTrex, the IRDAI is facilitating data exchange between repositories and insurance companies. So, a policyholder having an electronic Insurance Account (eIA) need not undergo multiple KYC formalities. However, this facility has not been extended to physical policies yet, which the IRDAI plans to provide through iTrex over time. At the moment through the iTrex digital platform, insurers and insurance repositories will be able to look up e-insurance account details and exchange e-KYC and policy data between insurance repositories and insurance companies.

Advantage insurers and repositories

Insurers

Look up the existence of e-insurance account details created by insurance repositories Request for e-account data from insurance repositories Send policy data to insurance repositories for policy credit

Insurance repositories

Share the e-account data with insurance companies Receive policy data from insurance companies and credit the amount Though it’s circular, the IRDAI said that iTrex will not only facilitate aggregating data across insurers but also help in identifying duplicates within the insurers as is evident in the ongoing exercise. The laborious physical documentation will witness a sea change with iTrex and electronic insurance accounts coming into play.

olmdesk@outlookindia.com