If you are a SBI card holder, you are insured for up to Rs 20 lakh

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Are you a customer of the State Bank of India? Do you use a debit card issued by the bank? If you do, you are eligible for a minimum of Rs 2 lakh life insurance coverage in case of accident-related deaths absolutely free. The amount could go up to Rs 20 lakh depending on the debit card you are using.

SBI has five variants of its debit card and each has a unique personal accident insurance cover. It is entirely free of cost.

Every card has two types of accidental coverage–one is death due to causes related to aircraft (air crash etc) and the other is all other accidents.

The basic debit card the bank offers is SBI Gold. Customers can get Rs 2 lakh insurance cover for non-air accident deaths and Rs 4 lakh for death due to aircraft-related causes.

If a customer holds a platinum card, the amount of insurance goes up to Rs 5 lakh for all accident-related deaths except aircraft accidents. The amount is double for aircraft-related causes.

Next in the rung are Signature cards. Its holders enjoy an insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh for non-air and air-related accident deaths, respectively.

Holders of SBI Pride and SBI Premium debit cards are also eligible for this benefit.

Pride customers get insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh for death from all accidents except air accidents and Rs 5 lakh for air-related accidents. The amounts applicable for holders of SBI Premium business cards are Rs 5 lakh (non-air accidents) and Rs 10 lakh for air-related deaths.

But how does one get these benefits?

For non-aircraft-related deaths the insurance cover becomes operational if the card is used for a transaction at least once on any channel–ATM or PoS or e-commerce site–in the 90 days preceding the date of the accident. One can claim the insurance and the bank would pay after checking all the documents.

The time window for which the card must be used at least once to be eligible for the air accident insurance cover is also 90 days preceding the date of the accident. But there is a rider here–the air ticket should have been purchased by using the SBI debit card.

“Several public sector and private sector banks offer such insurance cover. One has to go through the fine print, or enquire with the banks to know the details,” said Pritam Ghosh, manager, Bank of Baroda.