The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) has decided to postpone the execution of portability of health insurance policies to October 1.
Portability allows a policyholder to transfer the policy offered by one insurer to the other, while retaining the terms and conditions of the cover. The insurance regulator had earlier said it wanted to implement the health insurance portability facility from July 1. The decision was taken after chief executives of general insurance companies, in a meeting with Irda officials on Friday, sought more clarifications from the regulator.
According to officials of insurance companies, there are issues related to the accessibility of data on medical and claim histories of policyholders who transfer their policies. The insurers also sought a clarification on the portability of the health insurance policies issued by life insurance companies.
"The insurance companies need to understand why a policyholder would want to change a particular company. Hence, after a policyholder approaches us for the transfer of the policy to another insurer, we must be given at least a month's time to study the claims record and the medical history of the policy holder," said a senior official of a state-owned general insurance company.
In a release, Irda said it had embarked upon providing a web-based facility for insurers to feed in all relevant details on health insurance policies issued by them to individuals. This data would be accessible by the company a policyholder wishes to transfer his policy to.
“The web-enabled facility is being established by Irda and the authority would implement the portability of health insurance policies across non-life insurers in the country not later than October 1 2011. Such a system would enable the new insurer to obtain efficient data on the health insurance history of a policyholder who wishes to transfer his policy. Such a facility is necessary to enable the smooth running of the system,” the release said.
