By Express News Service HYDERABAD: The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) last week made significant changes benefiting health insurance policyholders.From allowing them to pay premiums in installments to porting from one plan to another within the same insurer, the regulator hopes tomake health insurance customer-friendly.For the first time ever, IRDAI has allowed policyholders to pay health insurance premiums in installments — be it monthly, quarterly or once every half year.

But the catch is the free-look period for monthly or quarterly premiums will be lower than annual premiums.Interestingly, insurers can increase the maximum age limit filed for insurance policies from the widely followed limit of up to 65 years, though insurers are given an option to decrease the minimum age for insurance policies.Importantly, the guidelines remain the same but the applicability of ‘migration’ and ‘portability’ has now been clearly defined.

Migration allows policyholders, including all members under family cover and members of group health insurance policy, to transfer the credit gained for pre-existing conditions and time-bound exclusions with the same insurer.Portability allows policyholders to transfer from one insurer to another.For policyholders with existing health conditions, the deal is sweetened as insurers have to specify a period of not more than four years to cover pre-existing diseases.

Also, customers can declare any disease contracted up to three months after taking the policy.According to Prasun Sikdar, MD & CEO, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance, the standardisation of health insurance will bring uniformity in interpretation as well as simplification, and ease of understanding of policies and go a long way in reducing industry grievances.There’s more.

The regulator made it clear that several critical illnesses such as mental problems, genetic diseases, and even psychological disorders shouldn’t be included in the exclusions list of the policy.The move is immensely beneficial to customers.Insurers can increase or decrease premiums by 15 per cent, caused due to the modifications based on the loss-ratio numbers of the last three financial years.

“Change of premium rates resulting in the increase shall be only after expiry of three years from the date of launch of approved or modified individual product,” said IRDAI.To reach out to customers, insurers can explore additional distribution channels for particular products without having to wait for the regulator’s approval and must provide a list of third-party administrators to policy holders before on-boarding customers.However, customers can change TPAs only at the time of renewal.

Moreover, insurers can even make minor modifications in approved individual insurance products on a certification basis.What’s new? Insurers can pay insurance premiums in installments They can increase the maximum age limit for insurance policies Applicability of ‘migration’ and ‘portability’ is clearly defined Insurers have to specify a period of not more than four years to cover pre-existing diseases Several critical illnesses such as mental problems, genetic diseases, and even psychological disorders shouldn’t be included in the exclusion list of policies