Video KYC for Insurance: Speedier Onboarding, Secure Policies

The competition is on to provide smooth, secure, and quick customer experiences. Traditionally, new policyholder onboarding has been a choke point, typically full of manual paperwork, physical proof of age barriers, and annoying delays. The process not only results in mass customer drop-offs but also adds operational inefficiencies and compliance issues.

Today, the world is different. Digital transformation is no longer a choice; it’s necessary. The worldwide Video KYC market, which was worth USD 282.74 million in 2024, is expected to be worth USD 1,018.3 million by 2033 with a staggering CAGR of 15.3% (Global Growth Insights). This aggressive growth reflects its importance in the BFSI industry, including insurance. Video KYC is a robust solution that has the potential to transform the way insurance firms engage with customers, write policies, and achieve iron-clad compliance in the digital era. It is all about removing the compromise between speed, security, and customer experience, allowing for quicker onboarding and eventually, safer policies.

The Challenge: Customer Drop-offs & Delayed Policies

The insurance industry, as many areas of the BFSI segment, is presented with a harsh reality: digital onboarding experiences tend to experience high abandonment rates. Customers, who have come to expect instant gratification in other digital experiences, lose interest in time-consuming forms, duplicate requests for documentation, or waiting days for verification. This immediately translates into lost revenue, diluted trust, and an impaired ability to scale. The answer is not merely going digital, it’s being smart digital.

How Video KYC Revolutionizes Insurance Onboarding

Video KYC provides a cutting-edge, but easy-to-use, journey towards remote customer verification, with a strong basis in advanced AI and rigorous regulatory compliance. Insurers are discovering that it can save customer onboarding time from days to mere minutes, a critical component of the fast-moving market today. This is how it functions to ease the onboarding process for insurance companies:

Step 1: Pre-Call Verification and Dynamic Customer Assignment: The process starts even before the video call. Automated system verifications confirm that the agent and customer are ready for a frictionless session. Intelligent assignment is driven by parameters that match customers with the most suitable agents, maximizing efficiency and user flow.

Step 2: Security Checks and Call Initiation: After it has been allocated, the video call is commenced. Automatically, security mechanisms kick in immediately, building secure channels and implementing strict compliance in real-time throughout the session. This first layer of security is not negotiable.

Step 3: Adherence to RBI Regulations: A very important feature for the financial industry. The whole Video KYC process is designed to satisfy the Reserve Bank of India’s robust guidelines, ensuring regulatory compliance and safe handling of data at all points. This compliance-first approach protects both the insurer and the policyholder.

Step 4: Document Presentation and Verification: During a live video call, customers show their ID documents. Data is then retrieved and extracted from the documents in real time via AI-based Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and then enhanced fraud detection. This automation reduces the risk of human error and streamlines the process considerably.

Step 5: Real-Time Audit and Completion: The whole session is live-monitored with real-time auditing during the call. This provides accuracy, quality, and ongoing compliance adherence. After successful completion, the validated customer is now ready to move on to policy issuance, typically within minutes.

Unlocking Key Benefits: Why Video KYC is a Game-Changer

An end-to-end Video KYC solution is not a mere utility but a strategic tool for insurance providers, one that brings multifaceted advantages to re-design the onboarding process:

• Improved Regulatory Compliance: Foremost, the solution guarantees 100% compliance with essential regulations such as RBI directions, the DPDP Act, and other regulatory norms. It offers built-in audit trails and secure storage, essential for satisfying strict compliance requirements and lowering the risk of legal actions.
  
• Better User Experience (UX): An intelligently designed Video KYC platform provides an easy-to-use interface that streamlines the process for agents and customers. Multilingualism adds further convenience, supporting India’s linguistic diversity and enhancing completion rates. Certain insurers have even attained 94-98% conversion rates in KYC procedures because of optimized digital flows.
  
• Harnessing Cutting-edge Technology: Its technological foundation is where the power lies. AI-driven OCR carries out lightning-fast document authentication. Biometric facial recognition verifies photo matching and advanced liveness detection avoids spoofing and identity fraud, fraud detection being enhanced by 40% relative to conventional KYC. AI-based liveness detection algorithms have also eliminated 50% of identity fraud cases in 2023.
  
• Unparalleled Scalability & Performance: Designed for today’s modern digital economy needs, these solutions easily manage high concurrency (multiple calls at one time) with little downtime. They provide out-of-the-box compatibility with CRMs and core banking systems, and more significantly, function perfectly even under low network bandwidth conditions (some with as low as 70kbps), reaching customers anywhere in the world with a 97%+ call completion rate.
  
• Secure Storage & Retention: All verified documents and video recordings are securely stored. Solutions provide flexible storage options and configurable purging schedules for compliance with data retention policies and privacy laws.
  
• Platform Flexibility & Customization: More advanced systems offer a dynamic agent allocation engine, allowing customized conversations. Key to this is the ability of customer risk ratings to power customized due diligence capabilities, so that the amount of inquiry is consistent with the risk profile. Deep customization capabilities engage in the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) process, ensuring consistent brand visibility and trust on the journey.

Why a Specialized Solution Like Gridlines Video KYC Is Important

Selecting the ideal Video KYC partner is crucial. A niche solution, like Gridlines Video KYC, is distinguished from others through its provision of an end-to-end, robust, and highly configurable platform that is tailored to address the very specific requirements of BFSI organizations, including insurance providers.

• Cost-Effective: Such solutions present competitive pricing plans with clear costs, enabling customization that explicitly supports your customer due diligence policy without any additional costs. Automating verification, Video KYC can minimize operating expenses by as much as 70% relative to traditional processes.
  
• Fast KYC Turnaround Time (TAT): The power to get KYC sessions done within two minutes is revolutionary. An optimized, automated verification engine reduces agent effort so that they can dedicate themselves to value-added customer interaction.
  
• Strong Security: End-to-end encryption provides protection of data while in transit as well as while at rest. Secure storage with restricted access, along with certifications such as ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II, ensures 100% compliance and strong data security.
  
• Personalized Customization: The product is customizable to suit various applications in insurance, ranging from policy issuance in life or health insurance to motor insurance or commercial corporate policies. This provides easy brand visibility and trust, improving overall customer satisfaction.
  
• Intensive Support: Onboarding and customer success teams offer constant interaction, guaranteeing smooth implementation and continuous assistance to facilitate key success indicators.
  
• Accelerated Go-Live: Configurable paths and validations enable fast configuration and shorter go-live duration. Seamless integration with core banking and origination systems ensures you can begin realizing the value of the solution in days, not weeks.

Let’s Redefine Insurance Onboarding – Together.

The future of insurance is digital, and it’s founded on trust and efficiency. By adopting next-generation Video KYC technology, insurance companies can cut out onboarding delays, drastically lower customer drop-offs, and make every policy secure and compliant-verified. It’s time to optimize operations, improve customer experience, and issue policies faster and more securely than ever. Want to revolutionize your onboarding? Schedule a demo today.

FAQs

1. What is Video KYC and how does it work in the insurance industry?
Video KYC (Know Your Customer) is a remote digital verification method that allows insurance companies to verify a customer’s identity through a live video interaction. It involves real-time document verification, facial recognition, liveness detection, and secure data processing—all conducted remotely.

2. Is Video KYC approved by insurance regulators in India?
Yes, Video KYC is approved by regulatory authorities like the IRDAI and RBI for identity verification. It is designed to meet compliance with data protection laws, including the DPDP Act, ensuring both insurer and customer safety.

3. How secure is Video KYC for sharing personal documents?
Video KYC platforms use end-to-end encryption, secure video recording, and encrypted storage to protect personal data. Many solutions are also ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certified, ensuring strong data security standards.

4. How long does a Video KYC session take?
Typically, a Video KYC session lasts 2–5 minutes. Compared to physical verifications, which can take days, this saves considerable time and helps issue insurance policies faster.5. What documents are required during a Video KYC session?
Commonly required documents include an Aadhaar card, PAN card, or any government-issued photo ID. These are shown during the video call and verified using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and AI tools.