Important Checklist to consider while renewing a Health Insurance Policy

A health insurance policy will safeguard you and your family’s health against various diseases, including this perilous COVID-19 pandemic. But you can enjoy the continuity of your plan by renewing health insurance plan. If your policy is not valid and it lapsed due to renewal failure, you can’t avail of all your policy benefits. Only by renewing your health policy on time, you can keep all the benefits without compromising anything.

Points to Remember While Renewing your Health Insurance Policy

• Review the sum insured
• Reveal your Health Conditions
• Review the existing features
• Family Size
• A shift in the city of residence
• Renew your policy timely
• Multi-year Premium Payment

Review the sum insured

Over the past few years, medical inflation is rising exponentially. The truth is that the healthcare inflation rate is double among other retail inflation rates. To ensure that all your expenses will be covered in the case of any hospitalization, you should opt for health insurance with an adequate sum insured. If your present health insurance plan offers lower sum insured, you can uplift the coverage by enhancing the sum insured during your policy renewal.

To opt for the right sum insured for your family, you should consider previous claims and the present health status of your family. Considering the current healthcare situation, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, you should purchase at least Rs 10-15 lakh sum insured for each family member. If your existing health insurer declines to increase the sum insured, you can port your health policy to another insurer where you will get an increased sum insured. Moreover, by purchasing a super top-up plan along with your base cover, you can increase the coverage of your existing base plan.

These days, the markets are covered with various health insurance plans for the benefit of policyholders. Now, you can purchase a 1 crore sum insured by paying a minimal premium amount. For example, a 1 crore sum insured health plan usually covers four members of a family (husband, wife, and 2 children). You can easily buy this type of plan by paying only Rs 1,500 a month.

Reveal your Health Conditions

Most people have a misconception that they need to disclose their pre-existing conditions to the insurer while purchasing a fresh health policy. But the reality is different. According to the terms and conditions of most insurance companies, you need to unveil your pre-existing diseases during both scenarios (purchasing a fresh policy and at the time of renewal). If you are diagnosed with any new disease during the policy period, don’t forget to inform your insurance company about the same during the policy renewal.

This will make your claim process smoother without any hassle. If you don’t reveal your pre-existing diseases, the insurance company has every right to cancel your claim request. Therefore, you should be transparent so that your claim settlement process runs without any difficulty. Being transparent will also help you to choose a plan that offers coverage without any waiting period.

It is imperative to reveal your pre-existing health conditions to your insurer. Because, in the future, if you want to port and your present health condition is mentioned on the proposal form, you don’t need to serve any waiting period for that disease. But if you didn’t mention it, then fresh waiting periods will be applicable for that particular disease. You may not find any health insurance plan that comes with a zero-day waiting period for critical diseases like diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and several common CVDs.

Review the existing features

If you purchased your health insurance policies 5-6 years before, then you may not get adequate benefits or coverage. Over the past few years, the insurance companies have offered several new-age health insurance products that are crammed with customer-friendly features and benefits. During the time of renewal, check all imperative features and benefits that your health plan lacks and port to a better plan, if required.

These days, you can conveniently migrate to a plan without losing the existing benefits of your plan. Switch to a plan that comes with zero co-payment and no-sub limits. Moreover, during the renewal process, look for some imperative add-ons like OPD coverage, daily cash allowance, and zone upgrade. All these will make your plan more robust and concrete as per current circumstances.

Family Size

If there is an addition to your family, you must uplift the size of the health cover. The added coverage will ensure that you won’t meet any financial turbulence if there are one or more medical emergencies in your family. But you must remember that any additional expense above the sum insured would have to be remunerated by the insured policyholder.

A shift in the city of residence

If you migrate from tier 2 cities to a metro city, your healthcare expenditure will also increase. In this scenario, you must enhance the sum insured if you have recently shifted your base to a bigger city.

Renew your policy timely

All insurance companies usually offer a grace period of 15-30 days to policyholders, and within this time frame, the policyholder should renew his/her policy to enjoy the continuity of services. You can’t initiate a claim within this grace period if you don’t renew your policy on time. If you didn’t pay the premium amount within this grace period, your policy would become invalid. Again, you need to purchase a new health policy in this scenario, and your waiting period will restart.

Multi-year Premium Payment

While you are planning to renew your health insurance plan, renew it for 2-3 years rather than 1 year to lock your premium. In this way, you may get lucrative discounts on single premiums by insurers for multi-year policies. 

These are certain checklists that a policyholder should consider while renewing his/her health insurance policy. These days, many insurers also offer an online renewal facility so that the policyholders can conveniently renew their policies and enjoy the utmost benefits.