Imagine a situation, you’re going for a picnic with your family in a car, and traffic police stops you and asks for policy documents. Although you’ve purchased car insurance, renew it every year without fail and also carry it always, but this time you forgot to carry it. You try to convince traffic police about the situation but he doesn’t listen to your explanations and fines you heavily. Had you carried the policy documents, your ride could’ve been more enjoyable. Such situations are very common and paying penalty or bribing is the only option.

e-Vahan Bima Benefits

So to ease policy holder’s pain, Insurance regulatory and development authority of India (IRDA) has launched e-Vahan Bima, an initiative that would ease pain of insurance policy holder from carrying physical copies of their policy documents everytime they drive their vehicle and instead digital insurance will be provided by the insurance company.

With eVahan Bima, both two and four wheeler policy will be issued in electronic/digital format which will come along with quick response code (called as QR code). Policies can be stored and accessed over the smartphones. If traffic police asks for the papers, then insured person just needs to show the QR code which contains all the policy details such as premium paid date, policy start and end date, vehicle details etc. QR code is nothing but a bar code which will have all your policy details.

When a traffic police scans the QR code, the information is fetched from the database of the insurance company or insurance information bureau and verification will be done speedily which otherwise takes time as traffic police have to go through each document carefully.

How to get digital/electronic motor insurance?

While buying a new policy or while renewing the existing one, policy would be sent to the customer in a digital format via E-mail. The digital paper will have QR code. SMS will also be sent on the registered mobile number after the digital policy is issued. It will contain details of the insurance policy.

How you can get QR code?

For this, you will need to download the app “QR code scanner” which is available on both google play store and App store. After downloading, scan the image of QR code present on your policy document. By clicking on the scan button, policy details can be seen.

Benefits to insurance companies:

Operation cost will go down as the cost of sending physical copy to the policyholder during buying and renewal will now be done physically which earlier was done via courier service leading to increase in cost incurred to the insurer. Since insurers expenses will also go down, there is a possibility that companies will pass on this benefit to the policy holder. Another benefit, insurers will get is the negative comments or feedback by their customers on non-receipt of policy documents. This causes lot of problem to the policy holder especially at the time of claim. With the launch of digital motor insurance policies, authenticating and verifying the documents will become easier and this will reduce the claim frauds.

More details on e-Vahan Bima:

1. e-Vahan Bima is already launched in Telangana from 02nd January, 2016 and it is the first state in India to do so. This means that these electronic policies will be accepted by their traffic department. And it is expected that other states in India will too implement it.
2. Private insurance companies such as ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Allianz, Tata AIG have already started issuing policies with QR code.
3. Since everything would be digital, it is environment friendly as paper work would be totally replacement. This will ultimately lead to protection of trees.
4. Policy holder doesn’t have to pay additional charge.
5. Till the system gets fully implemented, it is advised to the policy holder to carry physical copy as well. And this will be for a small period because IRDA wants this system to be in place across the country.
6. For those, who do not have a smartphone, they can paste a copy of QR image on their vehicle. So when traffic police asks for the insurance policy, he can refer the copied QR code. Other alternative is to keep physical copy handy to avoid any kind of inconvenience.
7. KYC is not mandatory for issuing policy in digital format. This is the rule set by IRDA.
8. India is going truly digital. After digital India, digital locker and life certificate; digital insurance is going to give really good help Indians.