Don’t be taken in by cold callers offering you benefits from your insurance company, you could be in for unpleasant surprises
We live in a high-pressure marketing environment aided by technology, and this has provided fraudsters with opportunities to prey on a confused and overwhelmed public.
For the gullible and careful, here are some basic rules. Don’t fall for cold callers who offer you benefits from your insurance company.
If you want to pursue the opportunity, contact your insurance company independently and verify that the offer comes from their behalf or from their authorized service provider.
Take for example someone who contacts you and says that he will get you a loan against your insurance policy.
Your insurer is unlikely to sell this service! Being in the business of risk coverage, insurers have ample and very well-defined avenues to deploy your premiums to earn returns, until the time comes to pay your claim, either to maturity. or death.
Lending against a policy is simply a benefit or accommodation that your insurer offers to you. It is not a product he wants to sell nor is there a goal he has to achieve. He is definitely not going to pay a service provider to go out and get policy loan customers!
Therefore, be wary of calls from your insurer or its representative offering you a loan against the policy.
Similarly third party assistance is offered to surrender your policy and get you premium refund. You do not need a service provider for this as the insurance company will deal with it quite efficiently and they certainly will not have authorized anyone to provide this service.
OTP sharing
Now let’s come to where you can be duped by this trick. Assuming you respond to a dubious offer and share your policy and KYC details, you are usually asked to pay a processing fee, which will be charged by the insurer to the claim Afterwards you’ll never hear from your friend again!
There may be changes or improvements to this scam where you are asked to share an OTP as part of loan or surrender processing.
As you know, OTPs can be misused with your identity cards and financial information like bank account numbers and insurance policies to withdraw money from your account or for a plethora of misuses for identity theft.
Solution
Only deal with your insurance company or their agent or broker whom you know, preferably have previously dealt with, or verified.
You may verify the Company’s contact information and credentials by accessing the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (www. Irdai.gov.in) website and the contact information of any agent, broker or other intermediary through the Company. straight. Recently a case of fraud has come to the fore, where the customer care numbers of a major bank, taken from internet search results instead of the bank’s website, turned out to be bogus.
Many of these operators now hide behind faceless technology and operate only in cyberspace. You never have to meet them and everything can be done online or over the phone. It seems easier on you than the loan you took out 30 years ago when you had to walk around with your hat in hand for a loan or advance.
Remember that it’s easy for those trying to pull on you too fast. And once they have whatever they want, they will disappear without a trace, in a puff of Cybersmoke!
(The author is a Business Journalist specializing in Insurance and Corporate History)
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