SC order on insurance claims a shot in the arm for policyholders

Insurers cannot reject claims mechanically, but experts say policyholders shouldn't take undue liberties with insurers' timeline for filing claims

The Supreme Court's (SC’s) recent judgment that insurers cannot reject claims purely on technical grounds will help policyholders greatly in situations where their claims are genuine but get rejected because of a strict enforcement of their deadline by insurers. 

In the case of Om Prakash versus Reliance General Insurance Company, the SC said insurers shouldn’t deny claims especially in cases where there has been a delay in filing the claim. It said that while the insured should file their claims immediately, insurers can't deny such claims if the delay was due to unavoidable circumstances. 

Legal experts say that while the