SS Bisht, a resident of Raipur road in Dehradun received a phone call. The caller claimed that he is from Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) and told a confused Bisht that his existing insurance policy has accumulated a bonus of Rs 1.05 lakhs.
The conviction in the voice of caller possessed the details of insurance policy after convincing Bisht. The caller informed that a representative would meet him soon and tell him the modalities to release the bonus.
After the call, Bisht who is a Government employee contacted one of his relative who works in an insurance company about the phone call who immediately clarified that the call was fake as IRDA never makes such calls. Thousands of people have received and are receiving such calls which are made by some unscrupulous agents of insurance companies.
The modus operandi of such callers is simple, they lure the unsuspecting costumers by posing as officers of IRDA or Insurance department (no such department exists) or ministry of insurance (again there is no such ministry) and offer lucrative bonus on existing policies. Some people ignore them, some like SS Bisht prefer to confirm the offer from the insurance companies and escape getting duped.
Some however fall to the plan of these agents and in next call they ask the customer to keep photocopies of age and address proof ready.
A representative of these agents visits the customer and tells him that a cheque of one fourth of the amount of the bonus is needed to be deposited and the amount mentioned in the cheque would be added in the bonus amount that would be deposited in the account of the customer within next twenty days.
In the process the customer is in fact provided a new insurance policy which obviously has maximum commission and the promised bonus never comes. The agents call these customers after some days and inform that their bonus clearance in process so that 15 day mandatory free look time period in which they can cancel their new policy passes.
After the free look period is over the calls to the customer are stopped and he ends up having a new policy which is not as per his requirement. The Divisional Manager of Bajaj Allianz life Insurance Company Naveen Chandra Srivastava told The Pioneer that people should not believe in such calls and added that many customers are falling prey to these people. He informed that the insurance companies are informing their customers about these fake calls via e-mails and letters.
The IRDA has also undertaken an awareness campaign in electronic and print media against such calls.