Oriental to make jewellery claims time-barred

The Oriental Insurance Company has decided to make all claims by jewellers and diamond merchants time barred owing to a pile-up of outstanding claims.

The general insurer plans to incorporate a 'time bond' clause in the 'Jewellers Block Insurance' policy, which will give the insured a deadline to provide documents required for processing the claim, failing which the claim shall lapse.

V N Bhargava, assistant general manager, said: "Every year we receive a large number of cases where policyholders file a claim and don't bother to furnish the paperwork, which leaves us with an enormous backlog of outstanding cases.

There have been instances where claims as high as Rs 30 lakh are outstanding."

Once the clause is introduced, the onus to complete the formalities will lie with the policyholder. Oriental had 147 outstanding claims as on March 31, 2005 has been party to another 50 so far this year.

Bhargava said claims will be settled in seven days on receipt of all requisite documents.