Driving without vehicle insurance is offense according to Motor Vehicle Act. But many drivers forget it to carry with them. To avoid such difficulties, IRDA launched e-Vahan Bima, a digital vehicle insurance policy, which can be stored in your email or phone.

According to Bangalore Traffic data for 2015, cases booked under not producing the documents are around 56,050. Considering the gravity of such common mistakes drivers commit, IRDA launched e-Vahan Bima. This is nothing a digital format of your vehicle insurance policy.

Features of e-Vahan Bima

• Insurance companies or their insurance repositories will issue e-Vahan Bima.
• However, along with e-Vahan Bima insurance companies still send you a physical copy of insurance.
• As of now e-Vahan Bima was launched in Telangana State from 2nd January, 2016. However, IRDA is confident that all states will accept this by 2017.
• e-Vahan Bima carries a unique QR Code. Quick Response Code (QR code) is a type of bar code that contains information about the item, in the instant case, the Motor Insurance Policy details.
• When the traffic police request for producing the vehicle insurance, you have to show him the digital format of e-Vahan Bima.
• He will scan this QR Code. This will automatically fetch all data related to vehicle insurance.
• If you don't have email id, then you can get an SMS once the policy is issued. This contains the unique code, through which policy details can be fetched.
• Along with this, IRDA soon launching a mobile app for carrying e-Vahan Bima in your mobile.
• To read QR code of policy, you have to download the QR code scanner app from your mobile. You have to scan the QR code image present on your policy document. That's it to fetch the details of your policy details.
• If you don't have a smartphone, then you can carry a print out of the policy and paste a copy of the QR image on the vehicle.
• You no need to pay the extra cost to get this e-Vahan Bima. It is purely free.
• From now onward, your insurance company will provide you the facility to convert all your physical insurance companies to this digital format along with QR Code.

Benefits of e-Vahan Bima

• By saving the usage of papers, you indirectly support the cleaner environment.
• Faster insurance issuance.
• Reduction in fraud.
• Higher customer satisfaction.
• Above all, vehicle owners can't forget the documents and be punishable under vehicle act.

In my view, this is a big game changer in an insurance industry. However, we have to wait how the respective states adopt to this new initiative and implement it. Because it is hard for drivers to show e-Vahan Bima in one state and physical copy in another state