Focus on customer service, claims settlement get top priority in health insurance: Niva Bupa Health Insurance chief Krishnan Ramachandran

There have been broadly two waves of regulatory changes that have happened in the non-life industry. The first wave was about ease of doing business, moving to market-based mechanisms and principle-based regulatory regimes. For example, the single limit on expense of management, use and file for products have been touched upon and these were very welcome regulatory changes. The second wave has been all about making sure that the consumer continues to be at the front and centre or the policyholder of everything that the insurance industry does. Many of the reforms have centred around how we build trust by fundamentally improving the claims experience in industry.  The next big thing from a regulatory standpoint will be the shift towards the IFRS accounting standard which is the global standard for insurance. In India as well, the standard has been notified and we very much look forward to IFRS becoming the standard for the insurance industry. Also, the industry is in the process of moving towards a risk-based capital.

There is greater focus on customer service compared to earlier. The entire industry under the guidance of the authority has stepped up customer service and claim settlement and are doing a high-quality job when it comes to claims settlement. Many of the recent regulations that have come into force are to make the policy holders’ life better, more transparency in the customer information sheet, use of technology and the health claims exchange to improve experience around claims. These are very proactive measures. The trust being the currency in the industry, the better we are able to do on claims, the more customers we are able to acquire.. Our claims settlement ratio at Niva Bupa has been consistently above 90 percent.

It has been the fastest growing and it is now, for a few years, the largest segment in the non-life industry close to 40 percenmt of non-life health insurance. From a macro standpoint, health insurance is perhaps one of the most exciting spaces in the country today, because the opportunity and headroom for growth is significant. But equally importantly, the need is really very strong. India is affected by the twin burden of both infections as well as non-communicable disease While Indian health care is of high quality and affordable in the global context, for the middle-class Indian, quality health care is quite expensive.

We have been growing at a CAGR of about 30 per cent backed up significant investments to drive growth, whether it’s new offices, new partnerships, banks, non-banks, signing up more agents, more brokers, launching new products in the last three -four years. We have launched several new industry leading innovative products or using technology to drive automation in the entire value chain, whether it’s on boarding a customer, servicing a customer, paying claims.

We launched a product called Aspire, targeted at millennials, Indians between the 25-35 age group. Historically, this segment has felt that they don’t need insurance. They are generally healthy and therefore, they have not been buying insurance. But we identified some very unique features that would appeal to this segment, including a maternity feature. We launched a feature called Fast Forward., Lock Age and so on.