IRDAI is planning to amend insurance rules so that insurers cannot deny lifelong renewal of a personal accident policy provided the policy has been earlier renewed without a break. . As per an exposure draft issued by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) on February 16, 2022, an insurer will not be able to deny lifelong renewal of a personal accident insurance policy on the grounds of age of policyholder. This is one of the changes proposed in insurance regulations in the exposure draft.
Similarly, if a policyholder wishes to port his insurance policy from one insurer to another then, once the portability form is received, then within 5 days the insurance company shall seek necessary details from the existing insurance company.
The amendment is proposed in order to make the portability of insurance policy a time-bound exercise. Further, insurer companies are encouraged to offer discounts where there is an improvement in the risk profile of policyholder, as per the IRDAI draft.
Kapil Mehta, Co-founder, SecureNow says, “The amendments proposed to the IRDA Health Insurance Regulations are of different types. From a policyholder perspective the most important proposals are that personal accident be renewable lifelong, in portability the onus to pull out prior claim information is the insurers’ and insurers are encouraged to give discounts on renewals if a policyholder’s health or other circumstances improve. Currently most personal accident plans have an upper age cap and senior citizens are largely uncovered. This issue will be addressed. Also, ported health insurances have a relatively larger number of claim rejections where the insurer says that prior claims were not correctly disclosed. This will now reduce because insurers will need to speak with other insurers to get claims information and cannot lay the blame on policyholders.”
