Medical Insurance - The Portability in the offing

Portability is a relatively new term used in connection with insurance. What is portability? Portability is taking from one place to another. So portability of insurance would be to take insurance from a new insurer without any change to the benefits enjoyed under the earlier insurance.

We do that in Motor Insurance without actually understanding it to be portability. The benefits of No Claim Bonus would accrue under a new insurer as if renewed with the present insurer.

Then what is new in portability. It is the Portability of Health Insurances that is being talked now. Today Insurers do not provide protection of benefits if the medical insurance is transferred from one insurer to another. This causes difficulty to the insuring public who are at a disadvantage even if they do not receive satisfactory service from the existing insurer.

With the objective of putting customer first, IRDA had requested General Insurance Council to come up with a proposal for offering Portable Health Insurance covers to the public. Accordingly General Insurance Council has come up with a recommendation. The salient features are:

· Sum Insured upto Rs.1 Lakh
· Basic Cover Benefits
· Premium to be determined by the companies within the band suggested
· Offered to those in the age band of 18 to 40.

This change when adopted gives more choice to the customer in choosing his health insurance service provider without compromising on the benefits earned till now. This change also puts it in perspective the importance of customer comfort and also portends more such changes to come in future.

Some news reports on the above caption

Business Standard

Business Line

Financial Express