The Hindu Business Line : ICICI Lombard plans biometric health cards

The features
Authorises transactions based on the customers' fingerprints.
Treatment at hospitals without having to make advance cash payment.
Covers head of family, 3 dependents

Mumbai , Dec. 8

It's now the turn of insurance companies, after banks, to introduce biometric cards in rural and semi-rural areas.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company plans to offer family biometric cards to group health insurance policyholders. The card will enable policyholders to get hospital treatment without making any advance cash payment.

Biometric cards authorise transactions based on the customers' fingerprints.

To begin with, ICICI Lombard will launch these cards for health insurance policyholders in Manipal, Karnataka. This family card will cover the head of the family and three other dependants, said Mr Pranav Prashad, Head, Rural and Agriculture business, ICICI Lombard. The insurer plans to introduce these cards to 7,000-10,000 policyholders by month-end.

ICICI Lombard has tied up with Financial Information Network & Operations Pvt Ltd (FINO) to create this card.

ICICI Bank, the parent company, has a 20 per cent stake in the newly launched FINO- a company that provides financial institutions with technological solutions to reach the underserved in the country.

ICICI Lombard's family card will contain a smart chip, which carries biometric information, personal details as well as the photograph of the policyholder and three dependants.

Mr Rishi Gupta, CFO, FINO, said the `smart card' would also load the sum insured that the policyholder is entitled to. So, when the customer presents the card at the hospital, the balance in the card can be immediately ascertained.

Tie-up with hospitals

ICICI Lombard will tie up with neighbourhood hospitals so that hand-held machines that read these cards can be installed.

Mr Prashad said the card would reduce administrative hassles for the customer and would eventually drive down distribution costs. If the experiment works in Manipal, it may extend this service to other rural health and motor insurance policyholders. ICICI Lombard would have to tie up with garages in the case of motor insurance.

In rural areas

Collecting biometric information in rural areas is, however, ridden with its own set of problems. "The fingerprints of people in the rural areas are not very clear as they perform intense manual labour. So, we take the impression of all the fingers and choose the best two prints of each hand," he said.

The card has the capacity to load as many as 15 applications and FINO is in talks with several other finance providers and government agencies. So, besides cash withdrawal, deposits and insurance premium payments, the urban and rural poor may also use this card at the neighbourhood kirana store and the post office.

Among banks, ICICI Bank has introduced biometric cards and Citibank has set up biometric ATMs. Several PSU banks are also on the verge of introducing similar technology for micro-finance customers.

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