Chapter 1: Why I Started TRST Score?

Having 200+ customers in just 1.2 years of TRST Score product launch is no small feat. People always ask me how I came up with the idea of TRST Score? I figured let me write about it and let the world know and say it honestly after all we are TRST Score.

What is TRST Score?

Think of TRST Score like a CIBIL but for for "Trustworthiness" of Employees, ?Agents, Gig Workers, Consultants etc. to get a 360 degree of the risk associated with dealing with a person. ?

The Backstory:

Right after my college in India, I left to the US and worked for KPMG and Oracle. I returned to India in 2008 to join SHRIRAM GENERAL INSURANCE CO. LTD. as its first CTO before it even got its license from IRDA. As we got IRDA license and started to do business, we were posed with a unique problem of Cover Notes.

To the uninitiated, Cover Notes ( a handwritten fill in the blanks documents - see sample) was a concept that prevailed at that time which acted as a temp policy document to say that you have now been covered by insurance for your vehicle THE VERY MOMENT you paid the money to the agent/employee. So if you had an accident even 1 minute post the cover note issuance, you were covered by the insurance policy). The company's main business came via agents and these agents would issue cover notes to procure business by visiting clients at their doorstep. It was a great idea, as people didn't have smart phones or internet those days to generate policies so they would, throughout the week, collect money and give cover notes and at the end of the week give all the cover notes to the branch office to be converted to a permanent insurance policy.

All was good but for one challenge : the agent/employee can pre-date the cover note (as it is written manually) post an accident too. So let us say a truck with no insurance policy meets with an accident and someone on the road is killed or injured, an agent/employee could write up a cover note and make it seem like the vehicle was covered by insurance (by predating it) and the insurance company ended up paying lacs in claims besides legal expenses.

As business grew so did the losses. A third party claim could drain lacs per claim for meagre premium of Rs. 10,000 - Rs. 50,000. This besides Own Damage claim (if the truck was damaged) that also will be covered. An agent/employee can ask for a bribe to issue such a policy. This was my first brush with "trustworthiness" issues in mass numbers.

"False claims" due to cover-notes was a major challenge. To prove that such a false cover note was issued was not easy. Losses began to mount. Many meetings were called to figure out how such false claims can be stopped.

An incidental meeting with a vendor was the turning point. This vendor told me that he can read Structured SMS Messages sent to a phone and that it can be used along side our CRM system to help sales people. An idea struck me, why not ask agents to send a SMS when a cover note is issued along with Vehicle Number? The date and time the SMS is received becomes the starting date and time of the policy. I couldn't stop my excitement and ran up to the MD's office. I told him about the idea. It took sometime for him to digest the concept but he felt there was some merit in what I said and called for a meeting with all stake holders. After a lot of debate, the idea was executed. The company saved crores as we were able to drastically reduce such false claims.

It was then that I felt that agents need a framework for "trustworthiness". I told my MD that an unethical agent can go from Shriram General to Shriram Chits to Shriram Fortune etc (basically within the group) and use the same fraudulent method and we wouldn't even know about the fact that it is the same person. I said this person can do this even beyond our group companies and can defraud multiple insurance companies too. I suggested a central database in line with credit bureaus. He felt keeping a central repository is a herculean task (forget across companies but even within the group) and we shelved that idea with little debate.

Back in 2009, we didn't have many things that we do now. Today we have an unique identifier like AADHAR, PAN but back then we didn't. Cloud, SAAS Platforms etc were non existent back then and companies didn't trust such providers. Shriram Finance didn't even share data with CIBIL back in 2009 and was skeptical of using it as it felt that their customers don't meet the standards.

This was my first attempt to create TRST Score back in 2009 but failed. TRST Score was created in 2021 so there is a lot more to the back story but just to keep the reading time to 3 to 5 mins, I intend to create it as multiple chapters. So you have to wait to know more.

To be continued....in Chapter 2.