Demand for health insurance increases due to pandemic

Indore: To brace oneself in fight against the pandemic COVID 19, enquiries and sale of health insurance policies by customers have gone up by over 20 per cent, claimed insurers. Insurers said low penetration in the health insurance sector is still a challenge but there is a lot of potential in tier 2 cities like Indore due to presence of large companies and salary class employees. Share of tier 2-3 cities in total demand has increased by almost 20 per cent in the last 2-3 weeks, said industry experts.

With increasing cases of COVID 19 across the country, insurance companies claimed a jump in traffic of customers in the post lock down period. Amit Chhabra, business head, health insurance at PolicyBazaar said, “Enquiries and sale of health insurance policies have gone up by around 20 per cent. Customers are increasingly becoming aware about having a health insurance policy after the outbreak of Corona virus and also getting more health conscious.”

Insurers said, COVID 19 is covered in almost all health policies and is treated as other any disease. Ashish Mehrotra, MD & CEO, Max Bupa Health Insurance, “The growth in health insurance policies can be attributed to increasing awareness amongst consumers about the varied benefits of health insurance. We have seen about 22 per cent growth in traffic in the past couple of weeks.”

In the lock down period, to facilitate customers buy health insurance policy, insurers have also offered tele-medical facility where customers can now buy policy without visiting a diagnostic center.

“In past 10 days, 95 per cent policies were sold was through tele-medical facility. There will a doctor on the other side that will ask some basic questions to understand the health situation of the customers and based on that health insurance policy is offered to the customer. There is no need to physically visit a diagnostic center,” said Chhabra.

Source: The Times of India