Coronavirus: Karnataka sees surge in health and life insurance buyers post COVID-19
The increase is largely due to greater awareness of financial risks associated with mortality. There has been a surge in young consumers opting to buy insurance cover
FollowBengaluru: The pandemic has made consumers in Karnataka financially more prudent which has made them invest more in protection products like term and health insurance. The sale of term insurance policies specific to the Karnataka region went up by 54% in April and by 32% for the time period April-September. In terms of health insurance bought, the state witnessed a growth by 92% YoY and 25% on an average from April-September.
A spike in buying behaviour has been clearly pronounced for term life insurance, considering the industry’s simplest and most affordable product. The term market has undergone a lot of changes in the first half of FY-20. In terms of customer buying proportion on an overall level Karnataka witnessed a growth by 21% compared to FY-19. Nearly 64% of the customers bought term policies with cover of 1 crore and above during the period of April-September 2020. This reflects how people are well invested in higher cover policies that are available at affordable prices. For a 30-year old individual buying term insurance with Rs 1 crore sum assured and for a cover up to 70 years, the premium comes around merely Rs. 1,000 per month.
Sudden uncertainty at any point of time may leave your family in a huge trouble if you do not have a safety net in place. Term insurance does not only help your beneficiary when you are not around but also protects you against the accidental un-stabilities. COVID has increased insurance awareness and consumers are keen to protect their families for the unpredicted times.
As per data, the age group of 42-50 years witnessed highest increase in term insurance buying YoY, i.e. by 95% and for the year 2020 the age group 31-40 years holds the largest share in terms of policies bought, i.e., 54%. Currently 67% of Policybazaar's traffic belongs to salaried segment and 33% is self-employed. The share of High Net Individuals buying policies online with Policybazaar is around 20%.
Santosh Agarwal, CBO-Life Insurance, Policybazaar.com, said “We have introduced various kinds of income surrogates, such as Credit Card limits, monthly SIP for mutual funds, bank statement for saving account in individual name and property loan statement, to ease out the process of arranging income documents which replicates their true capacity to take adequate sum assured. We have also tied up with bureaus like CIBIL, CRIF, and Experian Verifying the profiles and documents.
Talking about health insurance awareness in Karnataka, keeping in mind the rising medical cost, people are investing in higher health cover policies available online at affordable pricing. Around 43% people bought health plans with cover of 1 crore in Karnataka. 59% people bought a family floater health plan with a cover of 1 crore and 41% people bought individual health plans. The age group of 26-45 years invested maximum in health insurance, followed by the age segment 46-60, i.e. 20%.
Amit Chhabra, Health Insurance head, Policybazaar.com, said, “A sudden medical emergency at any point in time poses a huge threat to one’s accumulated corpus if he/she doesn’t have an adequate health cover. Keeping this in mind, buying a health insurance at right age is not only affordable but also makes sure that you stay financially secured against any medical emergency. With medical inflation rising at double-digit pace, consumers from Karnataka are now looking for health insurance plans with higher sum insured.”
About Policybazaar.com
Policybzaar.com is India's largest insurance marketplace and a leading insurtech brand globally. It is the flagship brand of Policybazaar.com Group of companies, that owns fintech brand, Paisabazaar.com, b2b venture, ZPhin.com, and lending and insurance marketplace in UAE region, Policybazaar.ae
The Policybazaar.com Group has backing from a host of investors including the likes of Soft Bank, InfoEdge (Naukri.com), Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, Premji Invest, besides investments from other PE funds and family offices. Policybazaar.com started with a purpose to educate people on insurance products and has had a significant influence on how insurance is bought in India. It has helped in driving penetration of pure life insurance, health insurance, and such products which were barely bought earlier.
From receiving traffic of 180,000 visitors in 2008, Policybazaar.com has come a long way and today hosts over 120 million visitors yearly and records sales of nearly 10 lac transactions a month. Currently, Policybazaar.com accounts for nearly 25% of India’s life cover, and over 10% of India’s retail health business. It accounts for roughly half of all internet based insurance purchase in the country and is more than doubling annually.
The company has received several accolades in India and globally. The most noteworthy being recognized as India’s top and world’s leading “Fin Tech Innovator” by the Global consultancy firm, KPMG and venture capital fund, H2 Ventures for 2015, 2016, 2018 & 2019. It has won a range of awards in the last couple of years, many of them consecutively. These include The Financial Express “Best Fintech Marketplace”, Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) Digital India Award for “Best Financial Website” and “Most Innovating Insurance Service”, IDC Iconic Award for “Tech Implementation leading to Operational Excellence”, Asia Insurance Review Award for "Insurtech of the Year", to name a few.
