Insurers may cut premium for healthy customers – Times of India

MUMBAI: With the insurance regulator recently allowing life companies to incorporate wellness into their policies, life insurers are working on ways to reward healthy behaviour by policyholders on an ongoing basis.
Tata AIA Life Insurance plans to bring its foreign partner’s ‘Vitality’ programme to India, while Max Life has incorporated wellness into a critical illness rider that it launched this week. The private insurer’s ‘critical illness and disability rider’ comes along with a ‘Max Fit’, a comprehensive wellness app designed to lead customers on a path of protection through holistic fitness and wellness.
Under Tata AIA’s Vitality programme, the company tracks and rewards with lower premium those policyholders who undergo regular health checks, eat right and live healthy. “The idea is that the healthier you are, the more benefits you get. AIA has had tremendous success with this. In India, the regulatory framework had to allow such products, and this happened only recently,” said Tata AIA Life Insurance MD & CEO Naveen Tahilyani. Tata AIA is a joint venture between Tata Sons and AIA Life, the Asian multinational that was spun out of AIG’s life insurance business.
Tata AIA has already filed the product with the regulator and is awaiting its approval. The private insurer has tied up with South African insurer Discovery, which came up with the Vitality concept. In India, it has partnered Practo and second-opinion consultant Medix. “We are working out propositions that we can take to our customers, like telemedicine and consultation,” said Tahilyani.
The private insurer has increased its focus on protection and is now is the market leader in terms of new protection plans sold this year. “The protection gap in the Indian market is 90% and we are going to focus on retaining our leadership in this segment,” said Tahilyani.
Besides serving as a value proposition for the customer, the Vitality programme also reduces risks for the insurance company. “It also provides us with lot of data about the customer so that over a period time we can cross-sell without any additional process,” said Tahilyani.