Page 10 - Life Insurance Today OCTOBER 2017

Data Security Standard: breach resulted in close to 3.2 million debit cards being compromised. The
government has sought a report from the RBI on the incident. The complaints
There is evidence to show that there
relating to spurious calls are included under the broader complaint category
is data pilferage happening in the
of unfair business practices in the Integrated Grievance Management
insurance sector. The Regulator is
System of IRDA which is the industry-wide repository of insurance grievance
receiving complaints of spurious calls
related information. The number of complaints of this nature as per IGMS is
where policyholders are being asked
as follows:
to surrender their existing policies
and get new ones. These calls cannot
SI. Year Number of %- varition over % of complaints on
take place without details of the
No. complaints previous year spurious calls to the total
insured and the policy details. There
complaints under IJFBP
are also instances of agents getting
policy details of vehicle owners and 1 2013-14 7356 15.32 3.47%
their motor insurance. There have 2 2014-15 9940 35.13 6.85%
been other calls where the caller 3 2015-16 9089 A 8.56 9.07%
positioning himself as an IRDAI official
4 2016-17 2946 (-) 67.59 4.73%
claimed that the insured was due to
receive a refund in respect of his life
insurance policy. Rise in fake calls and modus operandi:
Incorporating the new kinds of calls in the name of officials of IRDA received
The caller than sought to obtain bank by members of public, IRDA has shared the modus operandi used by one such
credentials of the policyholder on the spurious caller based on a complaint and provided links to the audio records
grounds that this was needed for of the spurious call to make members of public aware of the practices followed
effecting an online transfer. In all the to cheat them. However, the problem of spurious calls has been on the rise in
spurious calls, the insurance company recent times. More importantly, the calls in the name of IRDAI or its officials
on whose behalf the call was made rose significantly in 2013-14.
claimed that they had not authorised
any tele sales person.
In addition to such calls, there have been complaints of spurious calls made in
the name of RBI, Income tax department, Finance Ministry etc and other
IRDAI had carried out raids on call insurance related agencies like Governing Body of Insurance Council, Life
centres in the past along with
Insurance Council, insurance companies, and grievance management
enforcement authorities and shut
department of Central Government etc. The spurious callers are approaching
down large operations. But due to
customers either with fictitious offers of bonus on policies, returns, transfer
lack of co-ordination with telecom of commission payable to agents etc. or on the threat that their money is
regulator TRAI, it has not been able to
transferred to someone else.
prevent the mushrooming of fake call
centres. IRDAI has decided to beef up
its efforts on a comprehensive cyber In either case, the callers insist upon fulfilling certain formalities which include
submitting KYC documents, giving their details of bank account, cheques, card
security framework for the insurance
etc. and seeking payment of money for reasons like taking a dummy policy,
sector in the wake of recent cyber
payment of income tax, service tax etc. or for subscribing to some non financial
attacks.
offers. This is the modus operandi:
X The spurious callers call the victims repeatedly and introduce themselves
The regulator has also decided to be
as employees of IRDA.
proactive in light of the data breach
in one of ATM transaction processing X They would inform that proceeds of one's insurance policy are being
centres of a private bank. The data transferred to some other person.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

10 October 2017 Life Insurance Today

Sashi Publications Pvt Ltd Call 8443808873/ 8232083010