Prepaid mobile telephony services provider Telenor (India) Communications, on Monday announced that it had provided life insurance to a million of its customers - existing and new, who got a recharge done, while a million others were in the pipeline and would come under the insurance cover programme when they recharged their phones in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Formerly Uninor and a wholly-owned company of the Norway-based Telenor Group, Telenor is currently present in six circles across India and was the first in the industry to launch the free life insurance scheme called Telenor Suraksha, said its Circle Business Head (AP & TS) Shrinath Kotian. Of the 18 million subscribers who had enrolled for the offer scheme, pan-India, 7.8 million had already been insured, he added.
“It was a moving experience when I handed over a cheque for Rs. 50,000 to Laxmamma, wife of the late Venkataiah of Meerpet who died recently of kidney failure. And when she said that she now planned to use the money to get her daughter married, I felt the personal connect with subscribers with Telenor Suraksha,” he said, adding that Venkatesh, the legal heir of another customer Balaraju from Nalgonda was given a cheque of Rs. 10,000.
Briefing the media, Mr. Shrinath said that for all new customers, the insurance cover would come for a duration of two months, till the next recharge. The most redeeming feature of the programme in the unfortunate event of a customer’s demise, all that the legal heir would have to do is to produce the death certificate together with proof of identity and the SIM card. The claim to the tune of a 100 times the last recharge would be settled within a week.
All that the subscriber had to do was to walk across to any of the 265 retail outlets in the region, or call customer service centres or dial the self-help menu *121# and click their acceptance to subscribe for the insurance cover, Mr. Shrinath stated.
