The study also found that Indians put family first when it came to health insurance. Around 60 per cent of consumers preferred family health cover against 40 per cent who chose individual covers.
Almost 70% of the people who plan to buy health insurance wish to cover their children, 66% of them want to cover their spouse, and 30 per cent who plan families want to buy health insurance. The decision regarding the purchase of health insurance is usually motivated by the family, with the spouse as a strong influence.
"Health Insurance consumers are evolving from being price conscious to being value conscious with majority of them preferring family health plans over individual coverage and opting for a sum insured of is Rs 6-7 lakh. Most of the owners still feel inadequately protected as cost of hospitalization and incidence of illnesses across age groups is on the rise.
We at Max Bupa, have also observed that the most common sum insured individuals opt for is Rs 5 lakh and Rs10 lakh in case of a family cover. In fact, there has been a two-fold increase in the claims from the segment with a ticket size of over Rs 10 lakh since last year," said Anika Agarwal, head, marketing, Max Bupa.
The average age of health insurance purchasers in cities is 32 years. Tax planning and age are not the only factors many buy health insurance on their doctors' advice. In addition to hospitalization, consumers look for day care treatment, renewal benefits and new benefits like maternity and child care.
Similar to life insurance, purchasers prefer to buy a health policy from agents. More than half or 58 per cent of the people purchase or intend to purchase health insurance from an agent. Banks also emerged as a preferred channel of purchase in the metros.
Source: Sangeeta G
Source: Medindia
