The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) is concerned about data security in insurance companies. The regulator feels that steps being taken to secure data currently are inadequate considering that fraud callers are able to lay their hands on policy details. IRDAI will form a working group of chief technology officers of insurance companies and will come out with standards for data security.
Nilesh Sathe, member (life), IRDAI, said, “We are receiving complaints of spurious calls where policyholders are being asked to surrender their existing policies and get new ones. These calls cannot take place without details of the insured and the policy details”. There are also instances of agents getting policy details of vehicle-owners and their motor insurance.
Recently, IRDAI had carried out raids on call centres along with enforcement authorities and shut down large operations. But due to lack of coordination with telecom regulator TRAI, it has not been able to prevent the mushrooming of fake call centres.
