Insurance mis-sold by Bank

Have you been to bank to renew your FD and came out after signing an Insurance Proposal Form? You may be victim of Fraud by the Bank employee. Due to lack of understanding of Financial products many people fall trap of sales by their bank executive.

The Policy is generally a regular payment one which means that you continue to pay for 10-20 years. We at Insurance Samadhan have been approached by many senior citizens who have fallen trap of such mis selling and now all their money have turned Zero as they could not pay the subsequent premium in the policy.

Trusting your bank executive is good but we always recommend to read the product that you have purchased. You should always read the Premium Paid, Premium payment term, Maturity Year, Nominee details, Deductible etc.

In case felt cheated after reading the policy document, immediately raise concern to your insurance company customer service on email. The insurance company provides you with a 15 days freelook period. This period starts from the day of policy delivery and hence it is very important to store the envelope in which it was delivered so that you have proof of date.

If you raise your concern within 15 days of the receipt of the policy, your insurance company is liable to return your premium. Beyond 15 days you need to justify reasons of cancellation and need to prove the frauds.

Moreover, this often comes from banks with which the consumer has had a long term working relationship and they often take advantage of the trust bestowed on them. Cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Ahmedabad are the ones among others where the number of such complaints is definitely on the rise. The products are often loaded, they are either sold to the wrong person and there are often promises of higher returns, which is what makes the consumers so gullible.

The reason behind such rise in such activity, according to industry experts, is the competition among privatized banks to gain more and more consumers as much as possible and it is the relationship manager on whom the task falls to meet the targets. Or else, his job is on the line, he would miss out on incentives and there would a number of other repercussions as well. The bank employees have to be equipped with proper infrastructure and they should be provided proper knowledge about the products. Moreover, banks are now under the open architecture model, or the bancassurance model- and in such cases the bank is allowed to have tie ups with three insurers, pertaining to life, non- life and health insurance segments. Industry experts have opined that this open architecture model will definitely throw up more challenges. This is because having multiple tie ups is definitely going to require a specific skill set and not all bank employees will have them, leading them to make mistakes wittingly or unwittingly. They should first know about all the products across all the segments, and know how they are interlinked and what results they yield, before they interact with the consumers.

Also it has been seen that banks have still not understood the magnitude of the responsibility they take when they sell insurance and this is still a side business of sorts for them and it is just a fee based income. Thankfully, the IRDAI has issued guidelines pertaining to open architecture and banks and insurance companies have been told to comply with them.