THE Insurance Regulatory Development and Authority (IRDA) on recently issued guidelines to allow life insurance agents to sell health insurance products of standalone health insurers.
Now, 4 standalone health insurers are allowed to use agents of non-life general insurance companies to distribute their products.
Star Health and Allied Insurance, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, Max Bupa Health Insurance & Religare Health Insurance are the 4 standalone health insurers operating in India.
As per the guidelines issued in March 2011, the Insurance regulator IRDA allowed standalone health insurers to sell their health insurance products through general insurance agents.
The IRDA had further mandated fulfillment of the minimum business requirement for at least one general insurer for all those agents who were servicing two different general insurers (one of which was standalone health insurer).
“It is observed that currently the standalone health insurance companies can utilise the services of life insurance agents after converting them into composite agents, which calls for completion of certain certifications by them,“ said the guidelines.
Till now, life insurance agents wanting to sell health insurance products along with life insurance need to clear 2 different certification programmes.
However, following the latest guidelines, agents willing to sell life & health insurance products would have to clear only life insurance certification programme.
Moreover, standalone health insurers would have to train these agents for at minium 25 hours in order to familiarise them with the health insurance terminology.
Mr. Neeraj Basur, CFO, Max Bupa Health Insurance said, “Awareness for health insurance increased when general insurance agents were allowed to sell health insurance products of standalone health insurers. Similarly, we expect good response on this occasion as well. Since the decision is for the agents to take, there would not be any requirement for tie-up among life & standalone health insurance firm“
The guidelines also clarified that no agent of life or / non-life segment would be allowed to sell products of more than one standalone health insurer.
Src: mydigitalfc.com
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