Check terms and conditions of your policy immediately
there must be clause that you can Surender policy within period of 30 days and full refund would be issued
if you do after 30 days then full amount is not refunded before expiry of lock in period
Insurance policy sold by providing misleading advice
I wish to seek advice for a MAxlife insurance policy which was sold to me by misguiding me. It seems policy lockin period is 5 years, I would like to find out if there is a way of surrendering my policy earlier and getting back my refund. Sequence of events is as follows: Date & time Description around 23/12/2021 at 11am Reached Axis Bank Swasthya Vihar branch to encash Maxlife policy number 700618572 In the name of Sonal Mistry and Chintan Mistry which had matured. Told by Ms Isha that the policy could not be encashed since Chintan Mistry who was now a major was not present. We pleaded that they allow the policy to be encashed as Mrs Sonal Mistry one of the policy owners was present herself and Chintan Mistry was a minor when policy was subscribed. Ms Isha still declined to encash the policy however told us that even without Chintan's presence she could transfer money into Sonal Mistry's name if she bought another MaxLife policy as recommended by Ms Isha. Ms Isha then specifically mentioned that once we made payment of INR 10 lacs no further payments would be required, we could make additional payments at our discretion. Lockin period was 1 year after which we could withdraw the money whenever we wanted. Since we did not have any other option we decideed to subscribe to the policy mentioned by Ms Isha. We trusted the details of the policy as described by Ms Isha in good faith. Ms Isha made us sign the paperwork for the policy which we did as we believed what she had told us. Ms Isha did not verify our ability to pay ongoing premiums for the policy, she only asked for a copy of our bank account which we provided. Upon payment of INR 10 lacs we were provided a policy number 608276770 23/12/2022 Mr Shoaib messaged Mrs Sonal Mistry on Whatsapp demanding that we pay INR 10 lacs towards policy premium. 4/01/2023 Upon hearing from Mr Shoab we contacted Ms Isha who told us that she was on maternity leave and we should communicate with Mr Shoaib. When we told Mr Shoaib that Ms Isha told us that any further premiums were at our discretion he refused to believe us and messaged us again and again to convince us to pay our premiums. 6/01/2023 When we told him that we wanted to surrender our policy he told us that the lockin period was 5 years and our money would not be returned before then and penalties would be deducted.
Asked 3 years ago in Consumer Law
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13 Answers
If you are not satisfied with the policy, you can return the same within 15 days from the day you receive the policy documents. In some cases it is 30 days also. You can check this in your policy. The company is bound to cancel the policy if you request so and will return all your premium amount.
As can be seen from the sequence of events that I have described the policy was purchased last year so the 30 day period has passed. Since we were being forced to purchase the policy (refer the sequence) in order to redeem proceeds from our maturing policy and were in a hurry we did not read the conditions but instead relied on the verbal advice provided by employee of Axis Bank who was selling us the policy. The policy conditions which we have now read in detail mention that the lockin period is 5 years and if we don't pay premium every year the policy will go into default. What we would like to find out is if there is any way for us to get our money back earlier by filing a complaint as we have witness to prove our claim of misleading advice and any other processes that the bank may have bypassed. Further the bank representative also did not validate our ability to pay premiums in future.
Asked 3 years ago
For proper solution you are advised to contact directly so that your policy documents can be checked.
30 days period would be from date of receipt of policy
if you have not gone through terms and conditions of policy and sought refund within stipulated period you would not be entitled to refund
your chances of obtaining g refund are bleak
What are my avenues for filing a complaint ?
Asked 3 years ago
File complaint against bank and insurance company before consumer forum and seek orders to direct company to refund your money with interest
You can file a complaint against the company. Details are available on the following link:
https://irda.revalweb.com/Report.aspx#
As said earlier, it can only be suggested after going through the policy documents
Agreement between insurer and insured is governed by general law of land,” Indian Contract Act,” terms of agreement contrary to provisions of the Act and not valid and not enforceable. The clause as to lock in period of 5 years is illegal. Any party can rescind the agreement under forcing circumstances. You can very much surrender the police and collect the premium paid with interest. File a complaint in District Consumer Commission seeking withdrawal of policy. District Consumer Commission will issue direction to insurer to do the needful. Proceeding under new Consumer Protection Act, 2019 are very fast. Section 2 (46) of the Act is squarely applicable to your situation.
You wanted to avail the benefits adopting short cut methods hence you fell prey to your own fault/mistake.
How can you sign the papers without knowing what is written in it?
The insurance advisers or the staff may coerce you with attractive offers which may actually not exist.
One question to the person about the clarity though their brochures or any other pamphlet would have enlightened you about the fraud that those people are trying to play on yo in order to promote their own business.
If the police conditions say that you cannot encash the amount during the lock in period or within a stipulated time period then you cannot get any relief even if you approach court because the insurance company will express their inability to come to yor rescue owing to the conditions that are printed in the policy.
This appears to be yearly premium payment and you have paid the first year premium, hence you would be required to pay the premiums for the entire term of the policy in order to get the full maturity benefits, thus if you want to cancel the police, you may have to go through the policy conditions by which you will be entitled to surrender the police after deductions of certain amount as mentioned therein.
The oral commitment given by the insurance adviser at the time of purchasing the policy will not at all be taken into consideration even if you give a complaint.
Instead you will be blamed that you have read the policy conditions at the time of purchasing the policy but now you are coming out false allegations.
Therefore you may decide to continue the policy every year if at all you would like to get the full maturity value of the policy at the time of maturity.
In fact if you decide to discontinue the policy now even then you may have to wait to get a paltry amount out of your investment only after completion of the lock in period, therefore you will not get any relief from any source against the policy conditions to which you agreed and signed the forms.
Filing a complaint agaisnt the insurance company before the consumer forum is the only option available before you, but the consumer forum will pass the decision based only on the basis of law prevailing in this aspect. The law that governs this situation is the policy conditions, hence it would be a waste of time, money and energy.
You can decide accordingly.
You can file complaint and seek for cancellation of the same you can also file consumer.complaint
Dear client I am sorry to hear that but in this case you can file a complaint against them. insurance is being sold fraudulently with a corporate approach to defraud gullible people. Intermediaries have neither been penalised nor have they lost their license. There is a need for stern action from IRDA and insurers to curb the menace
