You Have 30 Days to Walk Away From an Insurance Policy You Were Talked Into

Somebody sold you a policy you did not understand. The returns described in the conversation are not in the document. The premium is larger than you can comfortably sustain for the term. This is common enough to be a category of complaint in its own right — and there is a specific, generous window in which it can be undone.

Thirty days, not fifteen

Under the IRDAI (Protection of Policyholders’ Interests) Regulations, 2024, every insurer must give a policyholder 30 days from the date of receipt of the policy document to review it and cancel. That replaced the earlier 15-day window with effect from 1 April 2024, and it applies to life and health policies regardless of how the policy was sold — online, through an agent, through a bank, or over the phone.

The clock runs from receipt of the policy document, not from the date you paid or the date the policy was issued. If the document reached you late, your window started late, and the postal or email evidence of when it arrived is worth keeping.

What you get back

Cancelling in the free-look period entitles you to a refund of the premium, less a limited and specified set of deductions: the cost of any medical examination the insurer carried out, the stamp duty charges, and — where the risk cover had already commenced — a proportionate risk premium for the period you were covered.

That is the complete list. A surrender charge, a penalty, or a deduction for the agent’s commission has no place in a free-look refund.

The insurer is required to process the request promptly — the regulations set a short outer limit measured in working days, not months.

How to exercise it

1. Write to the insurer, not the agent. The agent who mis-sold the policy is the least reliable channel for cancelling it. Use the insurer’s registered email or its policyholder portal.
2. State plainly that you are exercising the free-look option, quote the policy number, and give the date you received the document.
3. Give bank details for the refund and ask for written acknowledgement.
4. Keep the envelope, courier record or delivery email proving receipt date. If the insurer disputes that you were in time, this is the evidence that settles it.

If the window has closed

Past thirty days the free-look is gone, but the mis-selling complaint is not. Raise it with the insurer’s grievance officer, and escalate to the Insurance Ombudsman if it is not resolved — a free process that does not require a lawyer. Where a policy was sold on a promise that the document does not contain, that gap between what was said and what was signed is the substance of the complaint.

The practical reading

Treat the arrival of a policy document as a task, not a filing job. Read the benefit illustration, the term, the premium-paying period and the exclusions within the first week, while the entire premium is still recoverable. Thirty days is a real protection and it is quietly generous — but it is the only period in the life of the policy during which walking away costs you almost nothing.

How to use this page

This page describes rules published by the Reserve Bank of India, IRDAI or NPCI, identified by instrument and date so you can verify them yourself. It is general information about those rules, not advice on your particular dispute, and your bank’s or insurer’s own policy document governs the specifics of your account or policy.

Nobody should charge you to claim what is yours

Every process described here is free and can be started by you directly. No agent, consultant or “recovery service” can obtain an outcome you cannot obtain yourself, and none is required at any stage. Oquilia takes no fee from readers, offers no recovery service, and refers no one to any legal practice or intermediary.

If the rule was not followed

Escalate in order: the entity’s own grievance channel first, then the RBI Ombudsman via cms.rbi.org.in for banks, NBFCs and payment systems, or the Insurance Ombudsman for insurers. Complaints to the ombudsman are free, and you do not need a lawyer to file one.