IIB (Insurance Information Bureau)

The Insurance Information Bureau (IIB) is the data and analytics body of the Indian insurance industry, set up under the aegis of IRDAI and operating as a not-for-profit entity that aggregates policy and claim data from every licensed insurer and reinsurer in India. The IIB serves as the industry's central data warehouse — every motor policy, every motor claim, every health policy, every health claim, every life policy, and every life claim flows into the IIB's databases under defined reporting standards. The aggregated data is then used by IRDAI for regulatory analytics, by insurers for pricing and fraud detection, and increasingly by external researchers for academic and policy work under controlled access.

The IIB's most visible policyholder-facing service is the V-SEHAT search platform that lets a buyer or an underwriter check whether a vehicle has any active insurance and whether any insurer has rejected an underwriting application on it — a critical input when buying a used vehicle, since an undisclosed prior accident or theft history can reveal itself through the IIB record. The IIB also publishes industry reports — 'IIB Yearbook' for general insurance, 'IIB Yearbook' for life insurance, motor data analytics reports, health-claims pattern reports — that are widely used by industry analysts and journalists. Worked example: Ananya is buying a used car privately.

Before completing the purchase, she runs the vehicle's registration number through the IIB-affiliated portal to check if the vehicle has any active insurance, prior total-loss history, or theft-recovery history. The portal returns a record showing the vehicle has had three OD claims in five years (suggesting a high-claim history), no total-loss recorded, and an active comprehensive policy expiring in two months. Combined with a physical inspection and a service-history check, this IIB-sourced data helps her negotiate the price down or walk away from a vehicle with hidden issues.

A common misconception is that 'IIB is a complaints body'. It is not — complaints go to the insurer's grievance cell, then to the IRDAI Bima Bharosa portal, then to the Insurance Ombudsman. The IIB is purely a data aggregator and analytics body without any individual-claim adjudication role.

Another common misconception is that 'IIB data is publicly downloadable in raw form'. It is not — the IIB publishes aggregated industry analytics, and grants controlled access to research-grade data through licensed agreements, while raw policy and claim records remain confidential. Use the IIB for the lookup services and for industry-level statistics, and use other forums for individual-policy queries.

Related: irdai, bima-bharosa, insurance-repository.