Insurance for OPD is a very big opportunity: Mayank Bathwal

Private sector insurer Aditya Birla Health Insurance is looking at expanding the coverage of insurance by bringing in younger consumers, as well as more offerings for Our Patient Department (OPD) services.

“We will have mass focus, but within that we will look at segments, which have traditionally not been part of insurance,” said Mayank Bathwal, CEO, Aditya Birla Health Insurance, while noting that 65 per cent of the country’s population is below the age of 35 years and most of them do not have health insurance.

“If you get the younger and healthier population, it also helps in giving a more effective price even to the seniors, because ultimately it’s all about a price to be paid by the entire pool,” he said.

In an interaction with BusinessLine, Bathwal said the insurer is also looking at ways to bring in more women to buy health insurance and also disease-specific covers for which it wants to provide more holistic coverage.

“OPD is a very big opportunity. I am a great proponent of finding a way to get outpatient expense coverage because that again will bring in some of the uninsured people into the pool because they will see more value in insurances if OPD covered,” he noted.

One of the challenges for OPD insurance was how to create a network of hospitals and doctors but now many health tech players have solved the issue, he noted.

“The second problem was that it’s a small-ticket size, high-volume game. So, it has to be cashless. Now, technology platforms are available,” he said, adding that there was also risk of abuse but that also can be managed better.

“From the network and technology perspective, it is becoming more possible,” he said, but noted that the GST rate of 18 per cent is too high for OPD insurance. “If this is solved, it will become more effective,” he said.

“More and more OPD offerings will come. We already had OPD benefit for our diabetes and other chronic customers. We already have some riders also there, but we would like to explore that,” said Bathwal.

The insurer is also confident of growth opportunities across the health insurance segment with the Covid pandemic creating more awareness for the need for insurance.

“In the first nine months of the fiscal, we have grown at about 36 odd per cent, and we are close to ₹1,200 crore of premium. We expect to continue our growth trajectory even going forward,” he said.

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