Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is the only life insurance company in the country to have no pending complaints at the end of March 2019. According to the IRDAI Annual Report, LIC had no pending grievance despite 102,127 complaints being filed in 2018-19.
Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in its FY19 Annual report released on Monday said LIC resolved 100 percent of the complaints filed. Private life insurers, on the other hand, resolved 99.86 percent of the grievances with 84 outstanding complaints at the end of March 2019.
LIC has maintained this 100 percent track-record for more than five years. Private insurers began FY19 with 201 pending complaints. In FY19, they had 61,137 additional reported grievances.
Overall, as an industry, life insurers resolved 99.95 percent of the complaints filed. A total of 163,381 complaints were filed in FY19.
IRDAI has set up an integrated grievance management system which is an online platform to file complaints and also track the process.
Grievances related to misselling still accounted for 30 percent of the total complaints. However, this came down by 5 percent on a year-on-year basis.
There was an increase in the complaints related to policy servicing and claims. Unit-linked insurance plan (Ulip)-related complaints stayed constant at 1 percent.
Outstanding complaints dips for general insurers
There was a reduction in outstanding complaints in the non-life insurance industry as well. IRDAI said general insurers resolved 98.65 percent of the complaints in FY19. Of this, private sector insurers resolved 98.82 percent complaints while public sector ones resolved 98.48 percent complaints.
At the end of March 2019, a total of 600 complaints were pending of which 339 complaints belonged to the public sector and the rest to the private sector. A majority of complaints pertained to claims followed by policy-related grievances.