The Hindu Business Line : LIC gets IRDA nod for health product

New Delhi, Dec. 19 Life Insurance Corporation of India has got the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority’s (IRDA) nod for its health insurance product – LIC Health Plus. The corporation now plans to launch the product in the market during the first week of January as against the earlier target of last week of December.

“If we had got the necessary clearances last week, as planned earlier, then the product would have been available in the market by the end of the year. But since we have just got the approval from IRDA, we need to first train and equip our agents fully before the product is launched,” an LIC official told Business Line.

The product would be on the lines of floater plan, which would give the policyholder the option to take health insurance cover for his immediate family. The official also said that the product is not based on the cashless transaction model.

“We feel that a cashless model is not in favour of the customer as many hospitals are not accepting such a facility and also in many cases we found that they are charging more if a patient comes with an insurance cover that offers cashless treatment,” he said.

According to him, the product will offer a combination of hospital cash (fixed sum paid to the policyholder daily when admitted to a hospital) and surgical benefit where a lump sum will be paid towards list of surgeries covered under the policy and will also involve a part payment from the patient’s side.

Domiciliary claim

“The additional feature that we have introduced is called a domiciliary claim, where a patient taking treatment at home will be reimbursed as and when he submits the complete bills,” he added.

LIC is targeting to provide health cover to close to one crore families in the first year of the launch of the product and expects over Rs 5,000 crore of revenues.

It is also learnt that the company has tied up with eight third-party administrators (TPAs) to manage claims under the policy and has tied up with Syndicate Bank, Axis Bank and Bank of America for the settlements.

“The TPA would first advise the company on the permissibility of the claim who would in turn instruct the bankers to issue the claim cheque to its health insurance policyholders. This will help us settle the claims in a much faster way than what is happening in the market at the moment. We are targeting to issue the claims cheques within 24 hours of the approval,” the official said.

More Stories on : General Insurance | Regulatory Bodies & Rulings | Health

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