Last Friday my friend Hemant Mishra approached me with a problem, which may sound mundane, but it caused lot of trauma to my friend, courtesy insurance company.

Acting on my advice, he bought a term insurance policy as I always thought it was important even though he had an impressive profile – age 42, decent income, good savings, low debt, high placed professional in an MNC bank and to top it all a fitness buff. Based on this I had recommended him an amount which ran into crores as sum assured.

So I was surprised on receiving a call when an anxious Hemant who told me that there was a problem with respect to his term insurance policy.

Let me share Hemant’s account with you.

His Insurance agent had started the process under which made Hemant filled up the form, paid the premium followed by a battery of medical tests. Given the size of the policy, he had to answer quite a few questions from the Insurance company, besides visit to his office by insurance company’s personnel. The process was smoothly completed and it was time for him to receive the policy. Here comes the real shocker, when the insurance company informed Hemant that they would be charging an extra premium. Reason? quipped Hemant. He was informed that there were some issues with his medical reports, hence he would be required to pay extra charge to get the policy and insurance company wanted his approval in the matter.

At this point Hemant was more anxious to know what were these exact health related issues. Now comes the real twist. When he asked for his medical reports from the insurance company, he was informed that his medical reports were their property and cannot be divulged. He was aghast at this response

Now he was far more anxious to know about the health related issue in his medical report rather than the insurance policy itself.

When he mentioned this to me, I made the research team at ApnaPaisa to do a quick check on the practices followed by the various Insurance companies in disclosing the medical reports to the insured person. They informed that most companies will provide a photocopy of the medical reports on request to the consumer, whereas one . insurance company was willing to provide the copies only to the family doctor named in the Insurance proposal form. But the company chosen by my friend was an exception which did not provide the reports to the insured at all.

A quick check on the Insurance Act showed that Section 51 of the Insurance Act, 1938 requires that Insurance company should supply the “Policy Holder” the medical reports.

So legally speaking Hemant was entitled to a copy of all his medical report after paying a princely sum of Re. One, Once he became a policy holder which means he paid the extra premium and took the policy. After he got his policy he would be in a position to get the medical reports.

In case the Company still refused to give him the medical report, he could file an official complaint on the Insurance company’s website. In case that did not elicit any response he would have no choice but to file a complaint with the Insurance ombudsman or the alternative grievance redressal mechanism of IRDA (details on www.irdaindia.org).

By this time Hemant ( and his wife) were frantic with worry and so decided to repeat all the tests at his cost as he did not want to wait for the Insurance company to react to his request. I asked them not to worry too much as it was very unlikely that there would be anything seriously wrong in his report. Otherwise the Insurance company (or its re-insurers) would have clearly declined to issue the policy rather than just charged an extra premium. I asked him to follow up with the Insurance company after he took the policy since those reports would also serve as a very useful checking point against any reports that he would obtain on his own.

It is indeed sad that Hemant had to go through this distressing experience due to the policies of that specific insurance company.

Let’s hope other consumers are spared such an experience in the future.