NEW DELHI: The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) has disclosed that about 23 insurance companies haven’t disbursed policyholder money worth nearly Rs 15,167 crores on account of not being claimed by them.
PSU insurance major Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has Rs 10,509 crore out of the total unclaimed amount, as on March 31, 2018, while the 22 private sector insurers account for the remaining Rs 4,657.45 crore.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co has been piling up Rs 807.4 crore of unclaimed insurance claims followed Reliance Nippon Life Insurance (Rs 696.12 crore), SBI Life Insurance Co (Rs 678.59 crore) and HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co (Rs 659.3 crore).
The responsibility of timely disbursal to policyholders or nominees had earlier been entrusted to policyholder protection committees of individual account holders by the IRDAI.
Apart from asking the policy providers to update information regarding unclaimed amounts on their websites on half-yearly basis, the regulator has also instructed them to provide a search facility on their website for policy holders or beneficiaries to identify any such unclaimed amount in the future.
Policyholders/beneficiaries are required to enter the details like policy number, PAN of the policyholder, name of the policyholder, date of birth or Aadhaar number, in a window provided on the website of the insurer to find out the unclaimed amount.
IRDAI has asked insurance companies to identify the policyholders, beneficiaries and nominees of the Rs 15,167 crore of unclaimed funds and payout all dues to them.