ICICI Prudential rolls out critical illness cover

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company will be focussing on health insurance in a major way.

The company has announced the launch of "Crisis Cover", a policy covering 35 critical illnesses, total and permanent disability and also death.

Crisis Cover will be sold through the company's 680 branches. ICICI Prudential is working on revamping its features of Diabetes Care, a plan launched in November last year.

The policy encourages a monitoring regime as per the Diabetic Association of India with policyholders required to undergo three mandatory tests. In the 4th and 8th month every year after issuing the policy, a person has to undergo HbA1c test, test for blood pressure and pulse rate.

There is a comprehensive and compulsory medical check-up every year (except at the end of 5th policy year), which includes sequential medical analysis of 12 tests (SMA 12 covering blood sugar, lipids, S Creatinine etc), HbA1c, ECG, routine urine analysis and urine test for Microalbuminuria. The company includes the expenses for these test in the premium charges for the policy.

"However not many people undergo these tests regularly and so we plan to scale down the monitoring requirements. The revised product will then be filed with the Irda," said Shikha Sharma, CEO, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.

According to the studies by the company, personal healthcare spend has doubled in last five years from Rs 64,800 crore FY01 to Rs 135,500 crore in FY06. The five-year CAGR of healthcare spends is 15.9 per cent.

Another startling fact is the alarming rise of lifestyle diseases. Cancer and heart diseases will constitute 37 per cent of inpatient spends by 2012.

Research further shows that 30 per cent of the heart attack patients are below 40 years, one out of every 8 adult Indians is diabetic and 18 per cent of the urban population has hypertension. By 2016, 9 per cent of the total population will be over 60 years old who will be uninsured.