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You may expect better services from your insurers soon. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority is planning to take insurance complaints suo motu to ensure fair play by the insurers.
Insurance ombudsmen
“I am contemplating a system in which the insurance ombudsmen can take up complaints on a suo motu basis and take up investigation,” Mr J. Hari Narayan, Chairman, IRDA, told Business Line here.
The institution of insurance ombudsman was created by the Government in 1998 for quick disposal of the grievances of the insured.
“Strengthening this system further with powers to take up investigations suo motu will increase the customer welfare further,” Mr Hari Narayan said.
At present, there are 12 ombudsmen with clearly defined jurisdictions across the country. They can take up the complaints in life and non-life segments only after being approached by a policyholder.
The regulator was planning to convene a meeting with the ombudsmen soon to discuss the matter, he added.
In 2010-11, the twelve ombudsmen centres received a total of 21,065 complaints.
Of these, 52 per cent pertained to life insurers while the remaining were from the non-life sector.
After investigation, the ombudsmen had disposed 17,239 of these complaints during the year.
It is noteworthy that 71 per cent of these complaints were declared as non-acceptable/cannot be entertained.
The awards/recommendations were issued only for 15 per cent of the total complaints.
In addition to the ombudsmen system, the IRDA also introduced an integrated grievance management system last year which is integrated with the portals of almost all life and non-life insurers for real-time update of nature/status of complaints.
Till December last year, it received about 2.71 lakh complaints through this system.
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