Good question. Although many of these services are available with respective insurers,
you still need to approach individual insurance companies for specific requests.
Insurance Repository is a place where you can aggregate all these policies and get
a single click view and single click service.
Insurance companies are not authorized to convert the physical policies in to
a true digital policy. IRDA has authorized only insurance repositories
to do the same.
Therefore, even if you have bought an online policy from an insurer, you still need
to insist on the physical copy of the policy and preserve the same for its lifetime.
So, the safety of your policy is still your responsibility.
With the insurance repository, you no longer need to worry about the safety
of your policy.
When you wish to buy a new policy, your insurer will insist on the KYC and does
not accept your existing policy details as a proof of KYC.
With the insurance repository, your KYC is done once. When you opt for e-Insurance,
one unique e-Insurance Account number is issued to you. This E-Insurance account
is like a passport / super customer Id across all insurance companies and it is
valid for all insurance products under the ambit of IRDA.