General insurance companies are understood to have sought extension of time beyond the March 31 deadline for seeding policy-holders' accounts with Aadhaar.

G Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director of The New India Assurance Company Ltd, said the announcement from the Insurance Regulator came as a bolt from the blue just over a month back. “It will be a mammoth task considering that we do not have the technology in place for seeding the account with Aadhaar and in many cases, we do not have the contact number of the policyholder to get on the job on a war footing.

“We have over the last couple of weeks started collecting details from customers, who have either sought to renew their existing policies or availed of new policies. Only when the technology is in place will we be able to link the customer's account with the Aadhaar number.

While the company is in the process of putting in place a technology solution to address this issue, Srinivasan said “when a policy is bought online or when an individual takes delivery of a vehicle, the dealer helps the buyer with the insurance cover. In such instances, we hardly get to see the customer. The seeding of the policy with Aadhaar is, therefore, going to be an uphill task for insurance companies.”

The company at this juncture is servicing 2.7 crore policies, and all these would have to be linked with Aadhaar in the next 11 weeks, Srinivasan said.

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