By Jimmy John
Over 1.5m people have been covered under the recently introduced Corona Kavach and Corona Rakshak insurance plans.
With around 3.7m COVID-19 cases in the country, the pandemic has led to more people buying health insurance policies. The two COVID-19 specific policies were launched by insurance companies in July and have witnessed huge demand since then.
The Corona Kavach policy is a standard indemnity-based COVID-19 policy, with the minimum sum insured fixed at $669 and the maximum sum insured at $6,691. The policy covers the cost of treatment for any co-morbid condition along with the treatment of coronavirus.
In one month since its launch over 750,000 Corona Kavach policies have been sold by non-life and standalone health insurers across the country and total premium collected amounted to $28.7m.
The Corona Rakshak policy is a fixed-benefit plan in which the policyholder if diagnosed with COVID-19 and is hospitalised for three days, then the sum insured under the policy will be paid by the insurance company.
The sum insured for this policy is between $669 and $3,345. Since its launch around 183,000 Corona Rakshak policies have been sold with total premium amounting to $4m.
Data from IRDAI shows that in the current financial year till July 2020, health insurance premiums has risen to $2.5bn compared to $2.3bn over the same period last year, a growth of 10.44%.
Over the last 20 years, around 500 health products were introduced in the Indian market but since March this year the insurance regulator has approved 131 new health products.
Asia Insurance Review
