5 Things You Must Consider Before Health Insurance Renewal

1. Renewal Date:

In order to enjoy uninterrupted health insurance coverage, you must renew your health insurance policy before the due date. In case you fail to renew the policy in time, the insurance company offers a grace period of 15 days, within which you can renew your policy to avoid lapse of the policy. Once the policy lapses, it cannot be renewed. Renewing the policy before the lapse of policy will offer continuation benefits, and you do not have to go through a medical examination again. Besides, the renewal premium is relatively lesser than the regular premium.

2. Changing Health Insurance Needs:

The increasing age requires more healthcare. Ailments like hypertension and diabetes are common after a certain age. Also, the risk of critical illnesses increases with health. If you find any changes in your health, as a responsible policyholder, you must inform the insurer about them at the time of renewal, which may result in an increase in premium.

Also, our health insurance needs to change with changes in life stages. For example, if you have a regular health insurance policy and now you are married or have a child, you might want to add your new family members under your health insurance.

Therefore, it is important to check the health insurance coverage, limits and sub-limits, sum insured, etc., before renewing health insurance. If your health insurance needs have changed, it is necessary to get your policy upgraded or buy a top-up health insurance plan. Also, if your current insurer is not able to fulfil your health insurance requirements, you should consider shifting to the insurer that offers the benefits that you are looking for at an affordable premium.

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3. Claim Settlement Experience:

Before renewing your health insurance policy, you should consider the insurer's customer service and claim settlement experience. The customer service should be prompt and satisfactory. For a hassle-free cashless treatment, your insurer should have a wide network of hospitals and clinics. It ensures you get timely treatment without any hassle. If you have experienced claim settlement with your insurer and are dissatisfied with it, you should rethink renewing the policy.

4. Premium Offered by Competitors:

Due to the increased competition in the insurance sector, insurance companies try to offer competitive premium rates. Hence, while reassessing the benefits offered by the insurer, you should also check the policy premium charged by competitors for the same type of policy offering similar benefits. Nowadays, with many financial websites offering all the details of all the policies with easy comparison options, comparing different health insurance policies in terms of benefits, claim settlement ratio, reviews, and premiums has become very easy. If the policy does not offer value for the premium paid or charges a higher premium than competitors with similar benefits, you should rethink before renewing the health insurance policy.

5. Portability:

As per IRDAI, the portability in Health Insurance means the right accorded to individual Health Insurance policyholders (including all the members in a Family Floater Health Insurance Policies) to shift their policy to another insurer company along with transfer of credits gained for pre-existing conditions and time bound exclusions.

The portability feature allows you, the policyholder, to transfer your existing Health Insurance Policy to the new insurer without compromising on the discounts or bonuses provided by the existing policy. So, if you are not satisfied with the current insurer for any reason, instead of discontinuing the current policy and buying a separate policy with new waiting periods and losing the rewards earned on the existing policy, it makes sense to port the Health Insurance Policy.

The portability is applicable for all the indemnity-based Individual Health Insurance Policies, Family Floater Health Insurance Policies, and Group Health Insurance Schemes offered to the account holders of a bank. The IRDAI or insurers do not charge any fee for providing the portability facility in Health Insurance.

Porting of Health Insurance is nothing but porting of;

1. Current sum insured

2. Current insured members

3. Accumulated No Claim Bonus

4. Covered pre-existing diseases waiting periods

5. Covered specific diseases waiting periods

6. Maternity benefit waiting period

To conclude:

To get the most out of your Health Insurance Plan, it is crucial to read the fine print of the policy. When you are aware of your health conditions and health insurance policy, you will be able to judge whether the policy is suitable for you or not. Many times people buy policies solely on the basis of a recommendation of a friend, family, or insurance agent, without considering whether the policy matches their requirements. The ultimate goal of a Health Insurance Policy is to get financial assistance at the time of a medical emergency. Hence, you should make sure it provides all the benefits that you and your family need with good customer support at a competitive premium. If you are completely satisfied with your insurer and do not expect major changes in your health in the next 2-3 years, you can consider buying a multi-year health insurance policy.

Warm Regards,
Ketki Jadhav
Content Writer