Bharti Axa — Negligence towards and unfair penalty on policy holder

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

I took a policy with Bharti AXA Life Insurance Co. Ltd in April 2014. Details as follows :
Policy No:[protected] dt. 16 04 2014 issued by Bharti AXA and signed by Shri Sandeep Ghosh, MD & CEO (Based in Mumbai)
Policy Holder : Ms. Krithika Chandrasekaran
Plan: Bharti AXA Life Monthly Income Plan
Premium amount Rs.5000.35 p.m.

I gave them an ECS mandate for monthly deduction of premium from my salary account. They deducted the premium from April 2014 to May 2015. After this, the deduction abruptly stopped for reasons unknown, without any intimation to me. Unfortunately this was noticed by me only in March 2016 when I wanted to approach them to request for premium collection statement for the[protected] for purpose of IT exemption.

I immediately contacted a senior officer of the Chennai office of Bharti AXA who assured to look into the matter and revert. They gave lame excuses about lack of intimation and their negligence re regular premium deduction. Since there was no further reply from his side, finally in September 2016 I took up the matter with the MD of the company and after couple of weeks I was informed by the Company that (in their words) “the transaction was failed in our collection file due to Miscellaneous and actual reason for failure provided by your bank is due to technical issue at bank end. Hence ECS is active for policy... and due to non payment of premiums your policy is become paid up and you can stop paying premiums if you wish to. However on maturity you will get reduced sum assured amount.”

This meant, I assume, that out of Rs. 74, 854.80 collected from me they were prepared to pay only 10% i.e. 7, 485.48 and balance is to be foregone for absolutely no fault on my side.
I enquired further as to why I should suffer a loss for absolutely no fault from my side. I argued that had they informed me immediately in June 2015 about the technical issue at Bank or whatever they claimed was the reason, I would have without delay set right the issue as this is still my salary account; why they were keeping silent till I raised the issue and why should I be penalised for absolutely no fault of mine. No one has a satisfactory reply for this.
This point was not replied to by them but on the other hand I was informed by them that they are reactivating the ECS and I should pay upfront a sum of Rs. 1, 01, 075.00 duly accompanied by a request letter to reinstate the policy and also a declaration of good health in the prescribed form.

Since I am a salaried employee I informed them that I cannot afford to pay such a large sum and requested them to pay me back without any deduction, whatever premium was collected from me along with due applicable interest.

All I request for is the money I have paid till now along with the applicable interest to be paid back to me. This is my hard-earned money, I trust that this reasonable request to the Insurance Company will be considered a fair one and accordingly justice done.