Irdai to look at system for colour-coding health insurance covers

BENGALURU: To make life simpler for policyholders, insurance regulator Irdai might introduce a system of colour-coding health policies to easily assess the products’ complexity. In an exposure draft, an Irdai working group has proposed the colours green, orange, and red — with green ones being the least complex and red the most.

“The colour code on policies will be put up on the websites of insurers so that the customers can make an informed choice,” Irdai said. The proposed guidelines would be applicable to individual health products and not the group health products offered by corporates to employees or the ongoing state and national health insurance schemes.

The colour-coding will be based on a scoring method of between 0 and 6. Based on criteria, if a product gets a score of 2 or less, it will be green-coded, 2-4 will be orange and above 4-6 will be red.


“We feel the colour-coding initiative will help curb mis-selling and customers misunderstanding what they are buying, and thereby helping reduce unpleasant surprises at the time of the claim,” said PolicyBazaar business head (health insurance) Amit Chhabra. The regulator has sought comments from stakeholders by October 15 to the draft proposal.