Fixing Frauds Effectively

Insurance industry needs to gear up to address frauds.

- Nirmala Konjengbam

Whether its Billy Wilder’s classics like Double Indemnity (1944) or The Apartment (1960) or a more recent Francis Ford Coppola’s 1997 thriller The Rainmaker—the idea of insurance frauds have been explored by leading Hollywood directors time and again.

Back home, enough examples are available on the subject, which can help our Bollywood directors make moolahs.

Yes, in a country like India where crime rates are substantially high, insurance frauds are pretty much a commonplace activity.

In fact, the game has a certain geographical angle to it as well. Around three years’ ago, leading insurerers marked certain regions spanning across few Indian states that reported maximum insurance frauds. These included Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the eastern states of Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal. Among these, insurers further marked certain neck of the wood such as Meerut and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh; Darbhanga, Begusarai and Bhagalpur in Bihar. Other pockets comprised Kurnool, Guntur and Vishakaptnam in Andhra Pradesh and parts of Bengal.

What made the companies take such a move was the complaints they received from the high claims ratio of the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), government-sponsored policy targeted at the economically backward that offers a renewable life cover of 2 lakh for a premium of 330 a year.

Digging deep into the episode, data further revealed that 30 per cent of the claims came within the first 30 days of the person getting insured under this scheme. Corrupt practices and fraud were suspected as in most of these cases the insured person died within a month of taking the insurance cover!