How to Open an e-Insurance Account in India?

The Insurance regulatory and development authority of India has mandated that all new insurance policies issued from April 1, 2023 are required to be issued through an e-Insurance Account. With the help of an e-Insurance Account policy holders may view, modify and operate their insurance policies in digital or electronic form. We have discussed in detail regarding the e-Insurance Account here.

But, many existing policyholders are wondering how to manage their policies electronically. IRDAI has mandated e-IA only for new policies but the process of migration from old policies to an e-IA is not mandated by IRDA. Although it is not mandatory for existing policyholders to convert them to digital format, doing so would only help them in the future as they would get habituated with the e-IA going forward.

Keeping this in mind, we present you on how to convert physical insurance policies to digital format and at the same time how to open a new e-Insurance account without much hassle.

Process to Convert Existing Physical Insurance Policies to Digital/Electronic Format in e-IA:

Step 1- Filling Forms:

The first step in the process of converting physical insurance policies to electronic form is to fill the “e-Policy conversion form” by providing the required details such as:

• Policyholder’s name
• Policy Number
• e-Insurance Account Number
• Insurance Company name

Step 2- Submission:

In the next step, the completed “e-Policy conversion form” should be submitted to an insurance company or an approved person. The form can also be submitted to any of the four repositories permitted by IRDAI to open e-Insurance Accounts in India. For details on the repositories, please click here.

Step 3- Confirmation:

Once the forms are successfully submitted to the insurance company, approved person or a repository, you would get a confirmation email and SMS indenting the completion of the process.

It is to be noted that once the conversion process is done, there would be no need with the physical policy. One need not worry about losing the physical insurance policy. Additionally, there would be no charges to be paid by the policy holders for converting their physical policies to digital form and opening the e-Insurance Account. Policy holders may ask for the physical copies even after opening the e-IA account, but it is to be remembered that the insurance company would not provide the physical copies once an e-IA is created.

Policy holders may decide to open an e-Insurance account at the earliest as it would be mandatory for the future policies to be opened through an e-Insurance account. Since the process to convert physical documents to electronic form is not difficult it is advisable to open an e-Insurance account as soon as possible. It is to be noted that most of the life insurance plans are taken for a longer period of time and therefore it is better to convert them into the digital form immediately so that they could be operated with ease. It would also benefit you and your family members as all your insurance plans would be in one location.

The process of operating an e-Insurance account is similar to that of a demat account, where you could purchase, store, modify shares as per your requirements. Now, let us understand the process of opening an e-Insurance account in India:

Process to Open an e-Insurance Account (e-IA):

Step 1:

The first step in the process to open an e-insurance account is to fill the e-Insurance Account (e-IA) opening form. The form includes applicant details, permanent address, correspondence address, contact details, bank details, details of authorized representative such as name, relationship, address and contact details.

Step 2:

The second step in the process is to submit the form to the insurance company from whom you are making an insurance purchase. The costs of opening an e-IA would be borne by that insurance company and you would receive a confirmation mail and SMS once the process is completed. You are required to open only one e-insurance account and whenever you make an insurance policy purchase, the same would be credited to your e-IA account by the insurance company.

Documents Required for Opening e-IA:

For the process to be completed, customers are expected to submit certain documents that can verify their identity such as Know your customer (KYC).  Here is the list of documents that are to be submitted to the insurance company or the repository for creating an e-Insurance Account in your name.

• Original copy of Proof of date of birth
• Original copy of Proof of identity
• Original copy of Proof of address. 

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