Affordability of health insurance is the need of the hour: Irda Chairman

Addressing a FICCI Health Insurance Conference, the IRDAI Chairman T S Vijayan, Chairman said that apart from product innovation, affordability of health insurance is the need of the hour. He suggested that the insurers should work towards increasing the voluntary customer base, from the current 8% to at least 20-25% of India’s population in order to increase affordability.

The theme of the conference was ‘Creating Value through Customer Centricity’. The Irda chief recommended that health insurance should be driven by the consumer and the community it serves. "Health insurance is a financing mechanism where in the community pools its funds to be made available to those who need to pay for their medical expenses," said Vijayan. He also emphasized that a balance needs to be created between the expectations of the consumer and aspirations of the industry.

On the occasion a paper on Critical illness was also released. The aim of it is to review the existing definitions of critical illness and also identify and define new conditions.

G Srinivasan, Chair, FICCI Health Insurance Committee and CMD, The New India Assurance said that standardization of all procedures and forms should be carried out across the industry to bring in greater transparency.