ICICI Lombard pares waiting period, adds home care facility in health plans

Waiting period for bew customers reduced from 30 days to 15 days for covid-related claims with no hike in premium. Claims related to other illness will still have a 30-day waiting period

Private sector non-life insurer ICICI Lombard has added home care benefits and some other Covid-19-specific features to its existing health products that cover the costs of treatment.
 

This comes after the insurance regulator proposed all insurers to offer a benefit-based Covid-specific product by the end of June.

For new customers, the insurer has reduced the waiting period from 30 days to 15 for Covid-related claims with no increase in premium. It is applicable to all the health products that the company offers. Claims related to other illness will still have a 30-day waiting period.
 

Under the home health care benefits, policyholders who wish to get themselves treated at home and not visit a hospital due to concerns pertaining the virus will be covered under the health policies of the company. Importantly, Covid-19 home care treatment will be covered by the policies that company has to offer but subject to guidelines specified by the health ministry and the state authorities.
 

Further, the insurer has said it would continue to offer no claim bonus despite claims made due to Covid-19. The additional sum assured accrued in the policy will not be impacted if the policyholders gets hospitalised due to the virus.
 

Sanjeev Mantri, executive director at ICICI Lombard, said: “The enquiries for health insurance have gone up significantly. People are trying to get themselves aware on health fronts due to Covid”.
 

While many insurers have come up with their Covid-specific products, the insurance regulator has asked insurers to offer a standard benefit based product that will give the policyholders a lump sum amount if they test positive and require hospitalisation. But the insurers are free to price it according to their underwriting norms.
 

“We have seen for 80-85 per cent of the cases, patients do not require hospitalisation. So, there is enough data available to price the standard Covid product,” he said.
 

On the issue of insurers not including the PPE costs in claims, Mantri said: “We have put up a standard protocol by which the cost of PPE kits will be taken care of. But there will be a standardised tariff on which we will be operating it.”