Think back to the last time you bought a policy on your phone. Somewhere between choosing the plan and hitting “Pay”, you typed in your Aadhaar number, your PAN, your salary. You said whether you smoke. You listed the tablet you take every morning for blood pressure. You added your wife’s date of birth and your son’s name. You may have let the app see your location without really noticing.
That’s a lot to tell a company in fifteen minutes. More than most of your colleagues know about you, honestly.
None of this means you did anything wrong. Insurance can’t be priced or paid without personal details. But it helps to know what you actually handed over, where it goes after you press submit, and what you can still do about it.
What You Gave, and Why They Asked?
- Start with identity: Name, address, date of birth, Aadhaar, PAN, a photo. Insurers have to verify who they’re insuring, and many now pull this from Central KYC records rather than asking you to upload everything again.
- Then money: Term insurance is sized against your income, so expect questions about earnings and perhaps a salary slip or ITR. Your bank details are there so premiums can be collected and claims paid out.
- Health is the big one: For a health or term plan, you’ll be asked about illnesses, surgeries, medicines, family history, tobacco and alcohol. If the insurer asks for medical tests, those reports go straight to them as well.
- Next come family details: This covers everyone on the policy plus your nominee. Motor cover adds your registration number, chassis and engine numbers, and previous claims. Home cover adds property details.
And then there’s the category most people don’t think of at all: device and usage data. Phone identifiers, IP address, location, how you move around the app. Part of that is genuinely about security and catching fraud. Part of it feeds analytics and marketing. This last bucket is where you have the most say, because it’s the one least tied to the policy itself.
Where It Travels After You Press Submit?
Your information almost never sits with just one company.
Say you bought through a platform that lists plans from several insurers (a broker, an aggregator, or a corporate agent). That platform collects your details and passes them to whichever insurer is issuing your policy. From there, pieces of it may reach a Third Party Administrator that handles health claims, the diagnostic lab that did your tests, a reinsurer sharing the risk, or a surveyor checking a motor claim.
The industry also pools some policy and claims information with the Insurance Information Bureau of India, which helps insurers spot fraud and duplicate claims across companies. And, as with any regulated business, data can be disclosed to regulators or law enforcement when the law requires it.
That’s not a conspiracy. It’s simply how insurance runs. But it does mean your details go further than the insurance app icon on your screen suggests, so it’s worth knowing who’s in the chain.
Who’s Watching the People Watching Your Data?
India now has a fairly solid set of rules here.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, with its rules being phased in, sets the baseline. Companies must collect data for a stated purpose, take clear consent, keep it secure, and let you exercise rights over it. Getting it seriously wrong can mean heavy penalties.
IRDAI layers insurance-specific duties on top. Insurers and intermediaries have to keep policyholder information confidential, and the regulator’s cybersecurity guidelines set standards for how they protect systems and data.
Aadhaar has its own restrictions on storage and use, which is why many insurers are happy to accept a masked copy that shows only the last four digits.
What You’re Allowed to Ask For?
Quite a lot, actually. You can ask what personal data a company is processing and for what purpose. You can have errors corrected. You can pull back consent for anything your policy doesn’t need, marketing calls being the obvious example. You can ask for data to be erased once it’s no longer required, and you can raise a complaint, then escalate it if the company sits on it.
One honest caveat. Insurers are legally required to keep certain records for years, under both insurance and tax rules. So while your policy is running, and for some time after, “delete everything” isn’t going to happen. “Stop calling me with offers” absolutely can.
Signs Something Isn’t Right
Regulated insurers and distributors mostly handle data carefully. Trouble tends to come from fake apps, over-hungry permissions, and scammers borrowing a real brand’s name.
Be suspicious if an app wants your contacts, call logs, SMS or photo gallery and can’t explain why. Or if you can’t find an IRDAI registration anywhere. Or if the privacy policy is missing, or so vague it never says who your data goes to. Or if someone asks you to send documents over WhatsApp instead of uploading them inside the app.
And the biggest one of all: a phone call asking for your OTP or net banking password. No genuine insurer, agent or insurance app will ever do that. Just hang up.
A Few Minutes That Go a Long Way
You don’t need technical knowledge to protect yourself. Install insurance apps only from the Play Store or App Store, and tap on the developer name to confirm it’s the real company. Glance at the permissions before installing.
A health insurance purchase has no business needing your contact list. Skim the part of the privacy policy that explains data sharing, which is usually a few paragraphs. Use masked Aadhaar where you can. Say no to marketing if you don’t want it. Keep your phone locked, since your policy documents probably live on it now.
But please don’t confuse privacy with keeping secrets from your insurer. Leaving out a health condition to “protect your data” is one of the most common reasons claims get rejected. Tell the insurer everything the proposal form asks. Just make sure you’re telling a verified, regulated platform.
How This Works on Bajaj Finserv?
The Bajaj Finserv insurance app offers policies from partner insurers, with Bajaj Finance acting as an IRDAI-registered corporate agent. When you buy through it, the details you enter are shared with the partner insurer issuing your policy, because that insurer needs them to underwrite and service it.
Because it’s a regulated entity, that flow of information sits inside IRDAI’s rules and India’s data protection law. You can read its privacy policy, manage consent, and use a defined grievance process if something doesn’t sit right with you.
Share It, but Know Where It Goes
An insurer can’t price your health cover without knowing your health. It can’t pay your nominee without knowing who your nominee is. So hiding information isn’t the answer.
The answer is paying attention. Look at the permissions. Check the IRDAI registration. Read the bit of the privacy policy about sharing. Give your health details fully, and only inside the official insurance app. And if you ever want to know what’s being done with your information, ask. You’re entitled to, and surprisingly few people bother.
