The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has eased the rules on consumer identity authentication for the online insurance business, enabling insurers to cooperate with non-insurance firms to speed up authentication.
Non-insurance firms include Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政), online platforms that sell airline tickets or travel programs, mobile devices retailers, electric scooter manufactures and diabetes care apps, the commission said.
To team up with non-insurance firms to market new products, insurers earlier this year asked the commission to relax the rules on consumer identity authentication, Insurance Bureau Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
Under the previous rules, customers of non-insurance companies needed to pass the firms’ identity authentication protocols when logging on to their platforms or apps, and then had to pass insurers’ identity authentication protoclos to buy products, Shih said.
The relaxed rules require people to pass only one identification control, which would save time and could boost their willingness to buy insurance policies, Shih added.
Reviews have also found that the identification protocols used by non-insurance companies, such as Chunghwa Post, Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) and H2 Inc (慧康生活) are robust and workable, she said.
Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) plans to partner with Gogoro to launch new usage-based insurance products, while other insurers would work with Chunghwa Post and H2 to market fire and earthquake insurance products, and health insurance for people with diabetes respectively, she added.
The commission allows Gogoro, Chunghwa Post and H2 to market the insurance policies provided by their partners on their Web sites or apps after users pass identity authentication, Shih said.
If insurance firms want to cooperate with non-insurance firms on consumer identity authentication, they need to apply to the commission, as the authentication mechanism must be reliable, she added.
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