September, 2020

Video KYC – A Game Changer for the Insurance Market

Following in the footsteps of RBI, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, most recently released a draft circular allowing Video KYC for insurance companies, giving many companies and policy buyers relief to do business at ease. The announcement came earlier this month as board regulators strive to ease compliance processes and minimize physical contact, while keeping business moving, ensuring no industry misses out.

With the new guidelines, the insurance sector shifts its KYC operations to a completely paperless approach, thereby doing away with Traditional KYC which had its own limitations. Some of these being:

Offline processes of document collection are risky as documents can be tampered with, or misused while changing hands and information maybe leaked
Completing the process manually might lead to errors, which often leads to KYC drop-offs because customers aren’t willing to repeatedly pay physical visits. This also lengthens the process of onboarding customers and hampers the overall customer experience, thereby affecting company’s goodwill
The turnaround time taking longer leads to higher costs of file processing and hence, higher costs of acquiring customers
In smaller cities and rural areas, insurance agents and company outlets are few, with poor access to these facilities. A Video KYC tool makes it convenient for companies to widen their reach across these areas so as to bring in more business while bridging the gap between urban and rural facilities.

As tech takes over and insurance companies are starting to implemenet the Video KYC Onboarding process, here’s how the best Video KYC tools from Kwik.ID can help make a difference:

Being 100% RBI compliant, highly accurate, and 100% secure as well, our premium Video KYC tools puts you at no risk of losing or leaking out information
Now, the process isn’t just RBI complaint, but 100% IRDAI compliant too, leaving no room for errors
Insurance involves money, and that’s something nobody wants to play around with. With our AI-enabled Facematch and Liveliness tools, we’ll ensure you don’t have to. These tools work in real time and match the person on the screen, with the photo on the documents, thereby eliminating the risk of bots
With the process lasting for barely 3 minutes and being a smooth sailing one, Video KYC drop-offs are minimum. So you can expect at least an 85% success rate while reaching out to potential customers
Making the process easier for smaller towns and rural areas, we at Kwik.ID also offer a low bandwidth mode that lets business continue, anytime, anywhere. Our chat feature and Natural Language feature also enables easy conversation between the authorised agent and the potential customer
Moreover, customers are kept well informed and given a guided tour well in advance to make sure all documents are in place and they are prepared, not leaving them overwhelmed during the video KYC process in any way
Queueing, routing and scheduling by Kwik.ID’s Video based KYC identification helps streamline processes better as busy customers are kept well informed and need to make themselves available only when asked to, as opposed to Traditional KYC, where multiple physical meetings maybe expected.
Built-in OVD verification services are used for instant verification by Regulated Entities

With business being low for a while, this new move by IRDAI gives new impetus to insurance companies to #KeepMoving forward and doing business smoothly with potential policy buyers, while not losing out. Why would they, when all it takes is 3 minutes?

Financial Inclusion and the Potential of Video KYC

Financial inclusion has always been at the heart of India’s economic policy and with the introduction of Video KYC across sectors, we have come one step closer to achieving this very feat. Video-based remote KYC has paved the way for underbanked and unbanked areas in an attempt to provide equal financial access to all. Financial inclusion makes it easy for SMEs, millennials, professionals, entrepreneurs and others to apply for and receive loans, credit cards, and buy insurance policies, now more than ever, with easy Video KYC verification and completion of tedious procedures in minutes.

Video KYC is especially key to tier 2 and tier 3 cities where bank branches are far and few, but essential banking services remain more imperative. Kwik.ID is designed to ensure that our Video KYC tool reaches even the farthest of rural areas with provisions for a low bandwidth mode and a guided step-by-step processes; all of which we believe bridge the gap between customers and businesses, all across India.

Since its launch, the potential of Video KYC has been immense, and with the lockdown, the market for Video KYC vendors continues to flourish. So far, people stuck indoors resorted to online payments via different avenues, but what about those who didn’t have a bank account? Going physically to the bank and submitting documents was risky because it involved close contact. Luckily for us, just prior to the lockdown, Video based KYC was introduced and adopted by different sectors for opening bank accounts, demat accounts, Forex, online wallets and more, which made business much smoother for many.

In the most recent circular issued by the IRDAI, the regulatory board also permits Video KYC for insurance companies, which proves to be a game-changing move for the sector that for so long, suffered from the lack of customers during the lockdown.

With the introduction of Video KYC for Banks and Aadhar-based KYC, lenders now have access to customer data, with their consent. As per RBI guidelines, banks need to update the KYC details periodically to maintain a record of their account holders. In addition to Video KYC processes carried out while opening an account, account holders are requested to go through a re-KYC and submit the necessary documents, albeit online.

Video KYC proves to be a boon for fin-tech companies too, because owing to the limited manual KYC centers, very few customers thought of tech finance as a viable option, as the process wasn’t streamlined online. There was a 40% drop in manual KYC as compared to digital KYC. Being entirely online, features like OCR, Facematch, Liveliness detection, Geo-tagging are of great use to fintech companies, especially start-ups who want to minimize cost. These features validate the evidence and also rectify inconsistent data, thereby eliminating discrepancies and saving time.

Slowly and steadily, Video KYC has seeped into every sector and every industry, be it finance or otherwise. Digital KYC hasn’t just digitized the process, but accelerated it, as well. The entire process from application to disbursal that would once take up to 10 days, now takes barely a few hours.

India’s powerful digital ecosystem coupled with the potential Video KYC can unleash, are key to the country’s economic progress by driving financial inclusion.