Top Health Insurance Companies in India

At times of severe illness high costs of health care can come to be the size of a mountain, and you might not be able to take care of such huge expenses on your own. There is where health insurance comes in. You simply pay a premium amount every month and your insurer pays for a portion of the covered medical costs. The insurer might be able to negotiate better rates from doctors and hospitals. Health risks and uncertainties are embedded into life. With ever increasing costs of healthcare and increasing instances of diseases, health care seems like a necessity.

Now comes the question of which insurance company to choose? Which is the one you can place your trust in?

Here are 10 top health insurance providers in India are:

1. Alankit Insurance TPA ltd.
2. Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company Limited
3. Star Health & Allied Insurance Company Limited
4. Max Bupa Health Insurance Company Limited
5. ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited
6. Religare Health Insurance Company Limited
7. Cigna TTK Health Insurance Company Limited
8. Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited
9. New India Assurance Company Limited
10. Oriental Insurance Company Limited

Alankit Insurance TPA ltd. — It is a Licensed Third Party Administrator (TPA) started its operations in 2003. Alankit Insurance TPA ltd. entered the market with the mission to play an important role by offering smooth health insurance services to the beneficiaries. It provides hassle free services to all the stakeholders ensuring reduction in claim cost and control on fraudulent claims.

Alankit Health Care Limited (AHCL) is an ISO 9001 certified company by KPMG for quality systems and a process driven organization ensuring minimum scope of errors and increased efficiency. The Company is equipped to handle over 1 million policy holders. With State of the Art technology and in- house software, the company has managed to bring down process time for the various services it provides to its customers.

Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company Limited — Headquartered in Gurugram, Apollo Munich Insurance has offices in majorly all the metro cities. The company aims to make health insurance easily available and uncomplicated for all.

Apollo Health Insurance plans are valid in around 4,000 trusted hospitals across 831 cities and towns that include 50 Apollo Hospitals, which provide Cashless Hospitalization service.

Star Health & Allied Insurance Company Limited — Star Health and Allied Insurance Co. Ltd. began its operations in the year 2006 in India. Since Star Health Insurance in India has no other category of insurance to center and separate their attention to, they generally employ their resources to aim at providing excellent services, designed products and use core proficiency of innovation to offer the best to their customers.

With more than 400 offices all over India and around 8500 + hospitals network, Star Health Insurance Company Limited ranks amongst one of the largest providers of health insurance plans.

One of the factors by which you can judge the insurance company can be the premium income (sales turnover of insurance companies). The company has to be financially stable and strong.

Few other figure you would want to check is the number of policies issued or number of claims registered/paid, claims disposal rate, number of claims repudiated, number of claims pending for more than a year, grievances against the insurer with IRDA (Regulator).

The claims incurred ratio is not a direct indicator. A lower claims ratio does not give the customer any advantage. In fact, be wary with companies that have very low incurred claim ratios. Either their premium rating is loaded against the consumer or they are controlling claims artificially. The ideal Incurred Claims ratio hovers between 65 to 75%, if the company is fair and there is no deliberate intervention to lower claim pay-outs.

The number of claims registered and paid will give you an idea about how the claims are being handled by the company which will point to the insurer’s attitude towards settlement. The repudiation percentage is a strong indicator as it will put the insurer in perspective as to their approach on claim settlement.

Ageing of claims is another indicator. You don’t want to be insured by the company which has claims pending over a long period for their insured customers. Loop in the number of consumer complaints as well here by which you can judge the anti-customer nature of the company.