[Resolved]  Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance — Unnecessary requirement to hassle the customer

Address:

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

To
GRO, Bajaj Allianz

This is in reference to my policies [protected] & [protected], I would like to bring a issue to your notice experienced by me. I visited your noida branch this week in order to surrender my policy. I was then asked if am carrying all the documents or not. I was carrying all the documents that were required to surrender the policy as mentioned in terms and condition of the policy document. I was further told by Ms. Anuja to bring one rs revenue stamp else the request would not be processed. I tried to understand the need for a revenue and i was directed to Mr. Vijay Bhandari. Both of them first placed the argument that requirement is because of RBI.

I raised my concern with respect to the requirement and told them that no company is asking for such requirement , not even the largest insurance player .i.e. LIC. I also enquired with 3 private insurance companies over phone where my friends are working and all of them denied the need of this requirement. Even after hearing my argument the answer of both the executives remain the same, however this time they changed the reason to internal guidelines after I challenged their reasoning and requested for that specific guideline. I was further directed to talk to call centre and that too was not of much help . They also repeated the same argument.

I had no other choice but to get their requirement done in such a highly bureaucratic environment. I was wondering whether I had taken the right decision of buying policy with BAJAJ ALLIANZ, however I was definitely not regretting the decision of surrendering my policies as I was saving my family from undue hassle any time later.

I would also like to share details of your process of surrendering the policy. As I was surrendering the policy I was asked to look at web camera so that they can click my pictures. Ironically they made me do it twice because I was surrendering 2 policies and it was not feasible for them to use the same pic due to technical constraint. I was already upset with your requirement and this was adding to the disappointment.

After finishing this I went to Kotak life insurance with same list of requirements to avoid any further hassle and I met a lady there at there Noida branch who took five minutes to explain me the surrender process. To my surprise that person was extremely humble and absolutely not interested in clicking my pictures and with no requirement of revenue stamp.

I am sure this entire incident is good enough to explain you how your unnecessary requirements are creating hassle for your customer . Bajaj Allianz could be one of the leading insurance company in terms of new business however you are worst when it comes to customer service. Ms. Ahuja asked my not to challenge the process and it seems by not doing this that have to been able to identify what all unnecessary elements can be eliminated while doing any process.

May I ask you under which guidelines you are asking for revenue stamp whereas no other company is and also who has authorised you to click the picture of customer. If you are trying to save yourself from some fraud than I would request you to give some task to you risk team to evaluate how these additional requirement impacts your customer satisfaction or you can live with some amount of risk as it is within your risk appetite to serve your customer effectively. I am request you to educate your employee not to redirect your customer from one channel of communication to other. There was absolutely no need for redirecting me to call centre and also you call centre asked for a written complaint despite of having their customer over recorded line.

Dear IRDA, Regulator

I urge you to audit the process of Bajaj Allianz company and I am sure you will find many more areas wherein they need to have standard approach like wise the industry and stop hassling their customer. As an educated and informed customer I will make sure that I use the social media to share my experiences so that people can take decision accordingly.

Hope you both will investigate the matter and will do the needful.

Regards,
DILIP