Personal financeHealth insurance losing its popularity
Analysis presented by different market experts says that life and health insurance industry cannot see a lower side as these are very much needed between 100 crore population where expenses for medication and hospitalization are touching peak.
However, according to the recent study health insurance industry is actually going down in the country as a result of global economic slowdown. At the time of recession when not many are interested in investing money any where, the health insurance products are also not seeing many takers.
Besides, general insurance companies in government sector like New India Assurance, many companies in health insurance segment are facing trouble from past some. So, the analysis says that Indians are brave enough to take risk on their lives rather than investing a sufficient amount to secure their lives. Therefore, the well named companies like ICICI Lombard, Reliance General Insurance and Bajaj Allianz Health Insurance are witnessing loss. Some of these companies are ready to take IPO route to arrange cash for them.
According to entire study, private sector insurers are not going through a happy phase with customers not trusting these companies and some are not ready put their money on insurance.
Today health insurers in private sector are in a mess and one reason for this mess is that people are questioning the stability of these companies. One can easily trust a public sector insurer as that comes under the government umbrella but a private sector insurance company which has still not completed its first 10 years in the industry face tough tasks in a way to make good impression on one's mind.
There are insurers like ICICI Lombard and Reliance General Insurance which are operating in market under a big brand for a long time now, but what about a company like Apollo DKV Health Insurance which is still to make a big mark for itself and is still not eligible to get listed in capital market with its initial public offerings.
Speaking of reasons for lower subscription of health insurance policies, second in line could be the type of policies a company offers to an individual.
Bajaj Allianz Health Insurance offers its customers with a range of policies like Health Guard, Critical Illness, Hospital Cash, Silver Health, Health Ensure, Personal Guard, Insta Insure and Family Floater HG. With so many plans to offer, privately held insurance company is not getting good feedback and the reason being some costlier policies, all in one is not present or expensive or some policies are not available for the people who are about or above the age of 60.
There are many other things which makes a health insurance policy unattractive for customers like a health check up based on which the total cost of that policy is decided.
Besides all these reasons for downfall of health insurance industry, one reason is still to come. Many major general insurance companies in India are looking to select the hospitals where they want to provide claims to their customers and if a person gets treated in a hospital out of that network, the company would not be paying full claim.
With customers losing interest in health insurance and companies going through a lower growth period, it seems like insurance regulator would soon be getting ready with some new norms.