Insurers focus on senior citizen plans

Senior citizens may no longer need to depend on their children’s corporate and personal health insurance policies. Few insurance companies such as Apollo Munich Health Insurance, Bharti Axa General Insurance and ICICI Lombard General Insurance are now planning to enter into the senior citizen segment with renewed focus.
Specialised senior citizen health insurance plans are those where the policyholder is above 65 years of age. At present, there are not many senior citizen plans available in the market, and those available have many limitations. Insurance companies avoid providing cover to ‘high risk’ individuals. Premium for health insurance of senior citizens is high which de-motivates many to purchase them. Another factor, which prevents senior citizens from buying health insurance cover, is the maximum age limit till which the existing policy may be renewed.

“When we entered the health insurance business there was no concept of lifelong renewals in the segment. Now we can see that there are few insurers who are actually committing that their policies will be renewed as long as policyholder wishes to continue the plan,” said Antony Jacob, chief executive officer at Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company.

Apollo Munich renews their existing policies till the policyholder chooses to continue, however there should not be any break in policy renewal. However, like most insurers, Apollo Munich does not accept any new health insurance application from people above 66 years of age.

To enter the senior citizen segment, they have filed fresh products for approval to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda).

In order to provide health insurance coverage for senior citizen the major problem is adverse medical history that policyholder might have.

In such cases insurers are generally not inclined to cover the risk or cover it at a very high premium, which might not suit the policyholder.

“Irda has been encouraging universal health insurance plans for quite sometime and without senior citizen health insurance plans that objective cannot be achieved. We are certain that if insurers approach the regulator with proper products which are based on strong underwriting calculations, regulator will approve them,” said Subrahmanyam B, vice-president and head of health and commercial lines at Bharti AXA General Insurance Company.

With health insurance portability coming into effect from October last year, it has been felt that new and innovative products are required for overall growth of the segment.

“Insurers are continuously trying to innovate and come with new products and senior citizen plans may prove to be an important aspect,” said Sanjay Datta, head of underwriting and claims at ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company.