India spends around 5 per cent of its GDP on healthcare. The health insurance cover is still limited to only 15 per cent of the total population of India.
Indian Health insurance market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 43 per cent between 2011 and 2015. The market penetration will be three fold higher in 2015 as it is one of the fastest growing segments in non-life insurance.
The key growth drivers are increasing awareness of health insurance, rising healthcare costs, supporting demographic profiles, detariffing of the general insurance industry and rationalisation of premium rates.
The key market restraints are inadequate healthcare infrastructure, limited reach, significant underwriting losses for health insurance business in India, lack of standardisation and accreditation norms in the healthcare industry and insufficient data on Indian consumers and disease patterns.
The future trends in this sector are a shift in focus from group insurance to retail insurance portfolio, rationalisation of premium in group insurance policies, sub-limits, like co-pay and deductibles will increase and government companies are likely to increase their healthcare offerings.