Private standalone health insurance company Niva Bupa on February 23 rolled out ReAssure 2.0, a health insurance product with features such as carry forward of the unused sum insured and renewal premiums linked to entry age and claim-free period.
The key features are enhanced versions of ReAssure, Booster and Safeguard offerings available with its existing ReAssure product. The new product is available in two variants – Platinum+ or Titanium+. Under the Platinum+ variant, the annual premium for a 40-year-old buying a Rs 10-lakh cover will work out to Rs 11,000 plus GST.
Also read: Moneycontrol-SecureNow Health Insurance Ratings: Your guide to picking the right policy
Entry-age linked renewal premiums, sum insured carry forward on offer
Typically, health insurance renewal premiums go up depending on insurance companies’ claim experience, healthcare inflation and your age band. However, because of the product’s ‘Lock the clock’ feature, the age at which the consumer enters the policy gets locked until she makes her first claim.
For instance, if you buy the policy at the age of 35 years, the annual premium applicable to this age-band will continue until you make your first claim. Under this product, if you were to make your first claim at the age of, say, 45 years, you would have paid a premium applicable to a 35-year-old for ten years. Once you make the claim, the renewal premium applicable to your age bracket will then apply to you.
Its Booster+ benefit allows the policyholder to carry forward any unutilised base sum insured to the next policy year. The maximum accumulated sum insured can go up to five or ten times the base sum insured. “The sum insured amount will keep on accumulating with each renewal till up to 5X and 10X, depending on whether the customer has opted for platinum+ or titanium+ variant,” the company said in a media release.
Its ReAssure ‘Forever’ feature is an advanced version of the sum insured restore benefits offered by several other products. It promises to ensure that the policyholder will always have a sum insured equal to her base sum insured available to her after she has made her first claim.
For example, if she has a cover of Rs 10 lakh and her first claim amounts to Rs 5 lakh, the ReAssure Forever benefit will be triggered. At any point in time, irrespective of the claims she might have made, the customer will always have an additional Rs 10 lakh as a separate bucket of the sum insured for subsequent claims that year as also at renewal.
Optional benefits, renewal discounts based on health status
Its optional rider – Safeguard+ - allows policyholders to claim all expenses otherwise not payable under regular policies. It also ‘protects’ the Booster+ benefit in case of a low claim amount of up to Rs 1 lakh. This means that in case the claim amount is under Rs 1 lakh, the entire base sum insured will still be carried forward to the next policy year without any deductions.
“The product will provide 'guaranteed return’ as sum insured on every premium paid, so that the customer does not lose what he does not use. This product offers a win-win situation for the customer, both in the case of making a claim as it triggers ReAssure+ benefit “forever”, and in the case of not making any claim, the customer continues to pay the premium of the age at which he purchases the policy,” said Dr Bhabatosh Mishra, Director, Underwriting, Products and Claims, Niva Bupa Health Insurance.
It also comes with reward programmes. Policyholders, depending on their health score, will be entitled to a discount of up to 30 percent on renewal premiums. Like many other premium products, this plan does not feature restrictions such as room rent sub-limits and offers tele-consulting. It will cover diabetes and hypertension from the first policy day and any hospitalisation entailing a stay of over two hours.
Sum insured options range from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 1 crore for the age bracket of 18 years to 65 years.
