New-age features to reduce health insurance premium rates

Health insurance plans have evolved and become customer friendly over the years. But still many people avoid buying insurance thinking it is more of an expense.  Realising this of late many insurers have taken a number of steps so that the burden of premiums can be reduced on customers. From a discount on renewal premium to a waiver of premium, insurers have started offering many options for sharing the premium burden. Here are a few new-age features offered by insurance companies.

Discount on renewal premium

When you do not claim from a health insurance policy you generally get benefits in the form of No Claim Bonus or NCB where your sum insured gets increased for every claim-free year. But do you know there are also plans that give you the option of availing discount on renewal premium instead of increasing the cover size? These plans are suitable for those who already have a high sum insured but want to lower their premium rates. How does discount on premium rates work?

Under the option, the sum assured remains unchanged while premium rates get reduced on renewal. For example: if your insurer offers a discount of 10% against the first claim-free year on Rs 10 lakh sum assured for which you initially paid Rs 10,000 then after availing the discount you need to pay Rs 9,000 at the time of policy renewal.

“It’s a new initiative in the health insurance industry, and only a few of the insurers have this benefit included in their health plan. This generally works only if one does not claim from the health policy. On every alternate claim-free year, this plan provides up to 80% discount on the premium. It is also beneficial that this plan does not charge any loading on claims on the next year’s premium. According to us, it is very beneficial it will help those categories which do not claim often from their health insurance. This will increase the awareness and buying of health insurance. It is very cost-effective as well,” Jitendra Singh- VP, Swastika Insurance Broking Services Ltd.

A few of the plans that currently offer this benefit include Future Generali’s Health Suraksha and Edelweiss Health Plan.

Waiver of premium

Apart from offering discounts, there are also policies that give a waiver of premium option on their health plans on the lines of a life insurance plan. For example, ManipalCigna’sLifetime Health India and Global Plan offer waiver of premium, for one policy year, upon the occurrence of any of the covered contingencies.

“The policyholder who is also an insured person under the policy suffers from permanent partial disablement, permanent total disablement or death due to an injury caused by an accident within 365 days from the date of the event or he/she is diagnosed with a critical illness, listed under this cover, we will pay the next renewal premium of the policy, for a policy tenure of 1 year. The premium shall be paid towards existing insured persons covered under the same policy, with benefits same as the expiring policy,” states the website of Manipal Cigna.

Wellness points

Many insurers also offer discounts for wellness points like the number of steps taken in a day.  As per Policybazaar, 15% of customers use their wellness points as discounts while renewing their policies. There are products like HDFC-My Health Suraksha, MAX ReAssure, HEHI- Optima Restore, Cigna Pro health and ABHI-Activ Assure, which provide the option to earn wellness points.