Benefits of Health Insurance Portability

Are you not happy with your health insurer? Do you wish to have your health insurance from any other company? IRDA has made your wish come true. IRDA has introduced a great concept in the health insurance domain in which a person can transfer his health insurance policy from the current company to another without losing its benefits.

This concept is called Health Insurance Portability. It is just like Mobile Number Portability. Submit a form to the new insurer before 45 days of your policy renewal date stating the portability. That’s it. Within 15 days, the new insurer will decide the acceptance of your policy. What could be simpler than this?

Health Insurance Portability is a very beneficial concept for those who are not happy with their health insurance. The new policy you will choose with a new company can be individual or family floater as per your choice. The benefits of the previous policy will continue to exist after portability. Moreover, the sum insured of your new policy will be at least up to the sum insured of your previous policy.

Along with the benefits, there are also some conditions:

You can opt for portability only at the time of policy renewal
You need to submit the application before 45 days of the policy renewal date
The new insurer you will choose can set a high premium
The policy must be in continuation otherwise the new insurer may reject the portability in case premiums are not paid

In case the previous policy has been maintained without any break, all insurers will allow for gained credits by the insured when he switches to another insurer or plan as per the circular introduced by IRDA. The credit gained by the policyholder can be for pre-existing conditions or critical illness in terms of the waiting period.

However, this credit will remain limited to the previous policy’s sum insured. To know about the history of health insurance of the policyholder, a common database will be available accessible by all the insurers. That database will be carrying the entire data about the policy including claims also. This will help the insurers to decide whether to accept the portability or not.

You may also like to Read: Section 80C Deduction

So, it’s no more a hassle in case you didn’t like your current policy. IRDA has made things flexible enough to provide maximum benefits and facilities.

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