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Digital arrest victims may be going under cover
Banks and insurers are in early talks to design an insurance product that could cover victims of digital arrest scams, said people with knowledge of the matter. If implemented, India would become the first country with fraud coverage for such cyber scams. The plan aims to balance risk with affordable premiums, said one of the people cited.
The government has set up an interdepartmental committee to study a mechanism that complements tools such as a kill switch for transactions using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), allowing users to instantly freeze them.
“Individuals often face such fraud directly or through people close to them,” said Tanuj Gulani, president of Prudent Insurance Brokers. Insurers and regulators are discussing solutions that can protect victims who transfer money or data under psychological pressure, he said.
Existing insurance policies cover losses only after a digital fraud has occurred, Gulani said. Also, voluntary authorisations are excluded from most cyber insurance policies, even when made under duress. That's because deliberate, intentional or reckless action by a policyholder typically does not qualify for coverage.
However, the scale of such crimes has forced all stakeholders to think differently amid rising regulatory and judicial focus on digital fraud.
The Supreme Court last week characterised digital fraud cases amounting to more than Rs 54,000 crore as “dacoity” and asked the Centre to frame a standard operating procedure (SoP) to curb such crimes.
Separately, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said last week that it's working on a framework to compensate customers for small digital fraud losses, with proposals to reimburse up to 85% or Rs 25,000, whichever is lower, in certain cases.
Digital arrest scams, which have surged across India in recent years, involve various bad actors impersonating law enforcement and government officials and threatening victims with arrest or other punishment over video calls and forcing them to transfer money or share sensitive data. Most, but not all, victims are senior citizens with substantial cash holdings.
According to a government document, authorities have managed to prevent Rs 7,647 crore from reaching cybercriminals between April 2021 and November 2025. However, of the Rs 52,969 crore reported stolen during this period, only Rs 167 crore, around 2.18%, has been restored to victims.
The core issue is that victims technically authorise these transactions themselves, even though they do so under coercion. This makes it almost impossible to recover losses under existing insurance policies.
“Insurance works at scale,” Gulani said. “The real deal with policies of such nature is to solve the problem of distribution. A bank can bundle it with its credit cards or bank accounts. Pricing would follow and deductibles will help control cost and moral hazard.”
On the challenge of processing claims, Gulani said banks would be the first to know of a transaction. Establishing whether a loss has taken place will be easy, as will calculating its value. The main challenge is defining psychological duress and impersonation, and creating a clear procedure for claims. He noted that currently banks, insurers, regulators, and law enforcement work in silos.
“They will need to join hands to work out a solution that benefits everyone,” he said.
Subimal Bhattacharjee, policy advisor to governments and enterprises, said the insurance model for digital arrest scams is technically feasible and needs careful design to address the issue of authorised transactions under duress.
He suggested combining insurance with a kill switch and using advanced behavioural analytics to flag suspicious transfers.
“A viable approach could use industry-wide risk pooling, provide partial coverage of 70-80% of losses, and only cover transactions flagged as high-risk by AI,” Bhattacharjee said.
He said guardrails such as coverage caps, cool-off periods for large transfers, and shared responsibility among banks, users and insurers would be essential.
“The fundamental challenge is creating legal frameworks that recognise the spectrum between fully voluntary and technically authorised under duress,” he added. “Moral hazard can be managed with tiered coverage based on transaction anomalies rather than blanket protection.”
Experts said the initiative would be a first, combining technology and insurance to tackle the growing threat. With the government, banks and insurers in early discussions, the plan aims to give users both immediate control and financial protection against coercion-driven cyber fraud.
Source: EconomicTimes
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