Health Insurance Portability: When And Why You Should Switch Insurers

Health insurance is very important, especially with medical inflation at 13-14 per cent. However, you may not be happy with your policy. There could be many reasons for that; for example, you may have had some problems with claims or not been satisfied with the customer service, or higher premiums. In that case, you do not need to continue with the same insurance policy, but just like you can change your mobile number service provider, you can also change your insurance company.

However, porting works only for health insurance and not for health insurance.

Port Only When Necessary, Not By Default 

“The principle to be adopted for porting is this: Port if you must, not if you can. Porting of health insurance is not a free switching of carriers like mobile number portability. It comes with terms and conditions. Whether to accept the porting request or not is also up to the insurance company,” says Hari Radhakrishnan, expert, Insurance Brokers Association of India (IBAI).

So porting is not something you should do just for the sake of it. Unless there are compelling reasons to port out, like a high premium under an existing policy, poor service, or low coverage, one must not port. Porting can also be done only during the renewal of the policy.

As per Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (Irda) norms, the existing benefits are to be protected while porting is granted. The policyholder should check and ensure that all the benefits are available under the ported policy.

Advantages Of Porting 

The biggest advantage is that waiting periods are continued. Suppose you have a waiting period of three years for a pre-existing disease. If you have already paid premiums for one year for your existing policy, you just need to complete another two years of waiting period under the new policy. Also, the no-claim bonus continued. If you have earned any no-claim bonus, you do not lose its benefits either.

Keep In Mind 

There is a minimum of a 45-day period to apply to port a health insurance policy. You need to fill out a form, mention why you want to port, and provide relevant disclosures.

“You must check for pre-existing waiting periods. No fresh waiting period should apply. Sub-limits, if applied, should not be lower than the existing policy. The network hospital coverage should not be inferior to the existing network. Further, all declarations should be made truthfully in the proposal form to ensure that policy is not cancelled due to non-disclosure,” says Radhakrishnan.