Many customers are receiving fraudulent calls offering them an interest-free loan of Rs10 lakh from Reliance Capital when you buy a Reliance Life policy of Rs1 lakh premium. When Moneylife raised this issue, Reliance Life replied to Moneylife stating, The calls were made by spurious callers, it is a menace faced by the industry, and it is not part of any mis-selling. They even added that the industry has sought help from the EOW and we, as Reliance, have also filed over 170 FIRs against these spurious callers.

Read Is Reliance offering 10-year interest-free loan for buying insurance?

Reliance Life s response to Moneylife points to an article in the Times of India which assures us: These complaints have not made much headway since there was no transaction. Well, this is not entirely true. Moneylife Insurance Helpline has received one such case which was not only about nuisance calls of interest-free loan , but also an actual transaction of Reliance Life insurance policy purchase without getting any loan from Reliance Capital. Dr Sujay Verma (name changed) had a harrowing experience for the last six months. After running around to get the promised loan and making complaints to Reliance Life without getting any response from it for six months, Moneylife s intervention took two hours to ensure justice for the hapless consumer. Dr Verma received an email from head customer care of Reliance Life offering him a refund of the premium amount of Rs60,000 within three days. The refund was indeed given as it was promised.

Moneylife wrote to Reliance Life stating, This policy is a good example that can be analysed. Apart from the dubious interest-free loan, there was an actual selling of the policy. Can you give us the details on how the offer got translated to policy sale? Dr Verma's email has details of people who made calls. The policy will have the information about who sold the policy. There has been no response from Reliance Life till the time of writing this article.

Dr Verma had even made complaints to Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA). Can IRDA not smell a dead rat? Its reaction should have been Hey, wait a minute... what s going on instead of silently updating the status. IRDA forwards the grievances back to the insurance company which knows very well how to dodge the issue until there is a pressure from the media, insurance ombudsman or consumer court.

Dr Verma has also made false promises of conversion of policy to a single-premium plan . The truth is that Reliance Life Guaranteed Money Back Plan does not have a single premium payment option.

Here is part of a long email from Dr Verma to Moneylife:

I have been tricked and duped by Reliance Life s fraud advisors and personnel from the verification and loan department. They offered me availability of true 0% interest-free loan of Rs2.5 lakh Rs10 lakh from Reliance Capital for buying Guaranteed Money Back Plan from Reliance Life Insurance. The company s advisors even told me not to disclose this Loan-offer to other executives in Reliance to save my 15% agent-commission for buying the policy directly from the company itself and it will be remitted to me along with the sanctioned loan amount.

I trusted the Reliance ADA Group and opted for a loan of Rs6,00,000 and therefore gave a premium cheque of Rs60,000. I was then provided a 7-digit Loan-Pin: RLI3585 to only disclose to specific person for verifying and processing my loan amount. I was even given a due date of 13 December 2012 for the release of my loan amount.

But when I received my policy documents on 15th November, I immediately informed the company advisors about the blunders in my name spelling, photo, policy-term, sum assured and premium amount received. After repeated reminders for correction of errors/cancellation, my policy document was collected by the very same advisor of Reliance Life Insurance for the necessary corrections of the mistakes within the free-look period and told me that the corrected policy document will reach me in 10-15 days and that I will be provided a free-look period of another 15 days after the receipt of my corrected policy document.

From 10 December 2012 onwards all these advisors started showing their true colours. Neither my policy bond nor loan amount was given to me. Some misprinting errors were again given the reasons for the delay in delivery of my rectified policy bond and the loan amount delay was associated with it. The issue date of loan amount was first postponed to 20/12/2012. Then I was told that the loan amount is not electronically transferred, but a cheque amount of Rs6,09,000 has been couriered to me on 20th December.

At last when my patience and endurance ultimately crossed all its tolerance and threshold limits, then I did registered a complaint at the customer care and the local Reliance head office on 28th December. I had even furnished all the proofs for the fraudulent claims made by the AB-Capital in my support to the head-customer care and grievance officers. But even after passage of four months of registering my complaint and several reminders as well as escalations, I did not even get one suitable official reply/refund from the company. IRDA status of complaint is silently updated and on my calls and visits I have been told by their executives to be denied my cancellation and refund request because my free-look period is over and my identity proofs are correct without giving any official reply.

On 28 December 2012, I was offered to convert my plan to a single-premium plan unofficially. I insisted on a written offer made through the company s official address/email to verify its genuineness. I have not been contacted from the company since then.

They are not redressing the grievances of Reliance Life s premier customers. They have given a clean chit to their agencies though I am still receiving calls providing 0% loans from Reliance Life and the innocent customers are crucified for showing their trust in the Reliance ADA group. Despite of my claims that my policy document was collected by their advisor within the free-look period my cancellation and refund request/conversion of my policy to a single-premium plan request are not being entertained even after several reminders to the grievance officers.

In case you have received such calls please email us with fully details to [email protected].

If you have an insurance-related problem, please write to Moneylife Foundation.