Are you submitting AADHAAR for your insurance? You Should know this!

Last year Honorable Supreme Court has given its order related to use of Aadhaar as a compulsory document. Hon’,ble supreme court of India in Writ Petition (civil) No. 49412012 vide judgment dated 26th September 2018 held the amendment to Rule 9 (making Aadhaar and PAN in form 60 mandatory for availing financial services including insurance) of the PML (Maintenance of Records) Rule 2005, by PML Amendment Rules, 2017 to be unconstitutional. In its order, the Supreme Court made clear that no organization/institute can make Aadhar a mandatory document for any application or for the rendering of service except few clearly mentioned in the order like Income tax returns and linking of PAN with Aadhar where aadhaar is still kept as a mandatory document.

After the issue of this order, many insurance companies stopped taking the aadhar card as any proof. Which was really a major setback for not only policyholders but also for the insurance agents because till this time Aadhar has become an omnipresent document available to with everyone at every time.

On this same issue Insurance Regulation and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) issued a circular IRDAI/SDD/ClR/MISC/020/01/2019 dated 29/01/2019 allowing insurance companies to accept the Aadhar card as a valid document for taking insurance with following compulsions

1. The proposer/policyholder voluntarily offers Aadhar card as one of the documents for KYC purpose. This includes a physical copy of e-Aadhaar, masked Aadhaar, and Offline Aadhaar XML. However, the insurers will under no circumstance do the authentication either using the e-KYC facility or Yes/No authentication facility of UlDAl.
2. insurers should ensure that the first B digits of the Aadhaar number are properly/appropriately masked.
3. At no point in time more than last 4 digits of the Aadhaar number of any individual should be stored by the insurers in physical or digital form.

Conclusion

Now you can submit Aadhaar Card as a KYC document or age proof ( if acceptable by your insurer) to your insurer for new proposal or any other service request in your existing insurance policy. But before you submit your Aadhar document you must do following things to the copy of your aadhar

1. Mask the first 8 digits of your aadhar number or submit with virtual ID number
2. Self attests the copy you are submitting and write that you are voluntarily submitting the document.