If you have missed to purchase a new insurance policy you were planning to take in the financial year 2013-14 which ended yesterday don’t feel disheartened. Just call your insurance agent and he will readily provide you the plan you need. Interestingly, the receipt he will provide you will bear the date of March 31. For insurance companies, the March 31 will continue till April 2, though it’s all unofficial and more importantly illegal.
With the pressure to increase sales and get maximum benefit of the month of March, which brings highest business volumes, insurance companies unofficially extend the March 31 date till the cash and cheques collected by them are deposited in the bank. The fact that the banks do not do public transactions on April 1 gives extra time to these companies to push the sales forces for more business. On April 1, all banks remain closed for transactions as they do monitoring of their own accounts of last fiscal and prepare for the new financial year.
A Development Officer of the public sector insurance giant life Insurance Corporation (lIC) told this correspondent that the counters in his office will remain open and the receipts on April 1 and April 2 would be generated in the date of March 31. The agents are asked by the company officials to collect the cash or cheques showing the date of March 31 on the first two days of April.
One official of lIC on condition of anonymity told The Pioneer that the software experts of the corporation specially alter the computers generating the receipts so that the date of March 31 is shown on April 1 and 2. He disclosed that the Daily Cash Book (DCB) which automatically updates the date change is redirected to issue supplementary DCBs on April 1 and April 2. The account data of these companies will thus have three DCB’s- main DCB for March 31, Supplementary DCB 1 for April 1 and Supplementary DCB 2 for April 2- though all of them will be showing a receipt date of March 31.
The insurance experts say that this is a long practiced exercise and Insurance Regulatory Development Authority’s (IRDA) strictness on the issue has forced the companies to reduce this illegal practice for one or two days only. Earlier, these companies used to extend March 31 for at least a week to mop up large business volumes on the closing date.