Aadhaar Must For Insurance Policy; SIM Cards Not Linked With Aadhaar Won’t Be Disconnected!
In a long-anticipated move, Aadhaar has now been made compulsory to buy an insurance policy.
A move which was being anticipated since long, Govt. has now ordered that every insurance policy needs to be Aadhaar linked from now on.
Insurance providers are now worried because of the sheer scale of this exercise, because all new as well as existing policies has to be Aadhaar linked.
Meanwhile, Department of Telecommunications or DoT has clarified that mobile numbers which are not linked with Aadhaar won’t be terminated or disconnected, as of now.
Aadhaar-Insurance Linkage: Now Mandatory
Regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) has informed all insurance providers that every insurance policy has to be Aadhaar linked henceforth.
In a notification, IRDA said,
“The Authority clarifies that, linkage of Aadhaar number to insurance policies is mandatory under the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017,”
There are total of 54 insurance companies as of now, out of which LIC alone has 29 crore policy holders. Last year, 2.67 crore insurance policies were issued, out of which 2.05 crore were from LIC.
Linking every one of these policies with Aadhaar seems a challenging task.
As per the new guidelines, insurance providers have been asked to hold all payments, unless policyholders have linked their Aadhaar with their insurance policies.
Tapan Singhel, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance has requested that lack for Aadhaar shouldn’t be a reason for non-payment, especially for those who are in immediate need. However, in the long run, he said that the decision is indeed good.
Bhargav Dasgupta, MD & CEO at ICICI Lombard General Insurance said,
“In my view, it is a progressive and logical step towards creating a unified platform for financial services and, at the same time, promoting the government’s digitization agenda,”
As per reports coming in, every insurance company will now start Aadhaar linkage, which will include the newly launched OTP method as well.
DoT: Mobile Numbers Won’t Be Disconnected
Meanwhile, Aruna Sundararajan, secretary in the department of telecommunications (DoT) has clarified that mobile numbers not linked with Aadhaar won’t be disconnected as of now.
As per Aruna, DoT is waiting for Supreme Court’s decision on the matter. Supreme Court had earlier questioned Centre’s obsession with Aadhaar-Mobile linkage, asking them the reason behind this process.
DoT and TRAI will release a telecom policy concerning Aadhaar requirement in the month of December, and invite public comments for the same.
Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said,
“We are trying to bring a new telecom policy by February. For this the working group has started the process. We expect a high-level committee working on it to finalize draft by end of December and place it for public comments,”
We will keep you updated as more details come in.
