13 Sep 11: The Insurance Regulatory and Authority has issued guidelines to insurers to make the portability of health insurance quick and easy by instructing them to share the data regarding the policies which are to be migrated within a week from the date of request. The IRDA has already created a portal to share the migration data and this migration applies only for non-life company to a non-life company, which means that migration from life to non-life or vice versa is not allowed.
These guidelines will come in to effect from October 1st. As per the guidelines, the policy holders who wish to migrate should apply 45 days prior to the date of renewal and after the migration the bonus accrued (if any) will be carried forward by the new insurer.
The portability applies to individual policies as well as the ‘family floating’ policies. The portal created by the IRDA helps in routing the policy holder’s data which is needed to share for the sake of portability. With the help of this data, the waiting period of the customers to get the credit of the pre-exiting disease can be eliminated in case if they are migrating.
These guidelines are very helpful for the customers as they help the customers to migrate to other better health insurance policies, in case the present policies are not providing the required coverage. The impact of the health insurance portability is yet to be known, while it can be said that the small companies which are offering good service can gain from this policy.
Source: The Hindu Business Line