Hack of the day: Verify insurance agent before buying any policy

What it solves: Avoid fake agents selling invalid policies or collecting premiums outside Buying an insurance policy is one of the more significant financial decisions most households make, and it is also one of the more trust-dependent ones.

You hand over personal documents, share sensitive health or vehicle information, and pay a premium to someone on the basis that the policy they are selling you is real, registered, and will actually pay out when you need it. That trust is frequently exploited.Insurance fraud in India is not a rare edge case. Fake agents selling policies that do not exist, collecting premiums into personal accounts and disappearing, or selling products from insurers they are not authorised to represent are documented and recurring problems.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India has a free, publicly accessible tool that lets you verify any agent's credentials before you sign or pay anything.

Most policyholders have never used it, and most fraudsters are counting on exactly that.

Start by asking for the agent's licence number

Every licensed insurance agent in India is issued a unique licence number or IRDAI Unique Registration Number, commonly called a URN. A legitimate agent will have this and will provide it without hesitation when asked.

If the person in front of you becomes evasive, dismissive, or unable to produce a licence number when you ask directly, that is your first and most important signal to stop the conversation and disengage.Do not accept a business card or a company brochure as a substitute for the licence number. Those are easy to fabricate. The licence number is verifiable against a central database. Nothing else is.

Use the IRDAI Agent Locator

Go to the official IRDAI website at irdai.gov.in and look for the Agent Locator or Intermediary Search tool, which is available under the public portal or consumer services section.

The tool allows you to search by the agent's name, licence number, state of registration, or the insurer they claim to represent.Enter the details the agent has provided you and check what the database returns. You are looking for four things to match. The name in the database should correspond to the person in front of you. The licence should be active, not expired or suspended. The insurer listed in the database should be the same company whose policy the agent is selling you.

And the class of insurance, whether life, health, motor, or general, should correspond to the product being offered.If any of these four things do not match, do not proceed. A licence for life insurance does not authorise someone to sell you a health or motor policy. An agent registered with one insurer cannot legitimately sell you a product from a different company unless they hold a separate authorisation for that insurer.

Pay only through insurer-approved channels

This step catches the fraudsters who pass the credential check but exploit payment processes instead. Legitimate insurance premiums in India are always payable directly to the insurance company, through the insurer's official payment portal, bank account in the company's name, or authorised payment gateway. They are never payable into a personal bank account, a UPI ID belonging to an individual, or a third-party wallet.If an agent asks you to transfer the premium to a personal account, even with an explanation about internal processing or a special scheme, refuse immediately. No legitimate insurance company in India processes premiums through an individual's personal account. This is the single most common method through which premium fraud is executed, and it is entirely avoidable by insisting on paying through the official channel.Do not share OTPs with your agent under any circumstances. An OTP sent to your phone during a policy purchase is your authentication, not theirs. Sharing it gives them access to your account or payment instrument, not just the policy transaction.

One additional note on corporate agents

Banks, car dealerships, and other businesses that sell insurance as a secondary product are classified as corporate agents and are verified separately from individual agents. If you are buying a policy through a bank or a dealership, ask for their corporate agent registration number and verify it through IRDAI's corporate agent search. The same principle applies: verify first, pay second, and always through the insurer's own channels.