The mission of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) includes

• To protect the interest of and secure fair treatment to policyholders
• To bring about speedy and orderly growth of the insurance industry (including annuity and superannuation payments), for the benefit of the common man, and to provide long term funds for accelerating growth of the economy
• To promote fairness, transparency and orderly conduct in financial markets dealing with insurance and build a reliable management information system to enforce high standards of financial soundness amongst market players

In pursuit of this mission, IRDA is working to develop a system that can deliver benefits of insurance services in a speedy, transparent, efficient and cost effective manner to the policyholder. Insurance Repository (IR) is a unique concept towards achievement of this goal. IR is a central database wherein every insured person can have easy access to the details of his/her insurance policies and can request for various services on such policies. Individuals can hold all the insurance policies in electronic format in a single account.

NDML has received an approval from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) for setting up Insurance Repository and named it as ‘NSDL National Insurance Repository (NIR)’. NIR will facilitate holding of all type of insurance policies in electronic form in a single e-Insurance Account (eIA). It will do away with all the lacunae of holding the insurance policies in physical form. eIA will also facilitate common Know Your Customer (KYC) for eIA holder. The KYC done while opening an eIA will eliminate the need to repeatedly do the KYC every time an insurance policy is purchased. eIA also acts as a single point of contact for the account holder to update demographic details with all the insurance companies with whom insurance policies are held. It will also facilitate conversion of the existing paper policies into electronic policies at the request of the policy holders.