Andhra Pradesh Transport department has served notices to several insurance companies in the past few days, for not providing vehicle insurance policy information to the Indian Insurance Bureau (IIB). IIB is the central repository of vehicle insurance policies in India.
Out of 90 lakh vehicles in the state of Andhra Pradesh, IIB found insurance data of only 25 lakh vehicles. Following a request from the state transport department, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) warned risk firms of criminal action if they don’t update this information.
The government is trying to centralize all updated vehicle insurance records and make it available to the authorities at Regional Transport Offices. When a motor insurance policyis sold by by dealers/agents, only the cover note gets generated which is not a legal document. After this, the agents send this cover note to the insurer and then a valid policy certificate with policy number gets generated. But because of the gap in this process, the policy numbers have not been updated with IIB, which is the only source for confirming the authenticity of vehicle insurance policies.