If Panda’s plan fructifies, Bima Sugam will be an online insurance marketplace for buying, selling, and servicing insurance policies as well as settling claims. “This marketplace serves as a one-stop solution for all insurance stakeholders, including customers, insurers, intermediaries, and agents, thereby, promoting transparency, efficiency, and collaboration across the entire insurance value chain,” is how the Irdai puts it. At a recent summit of insurance heads in Hyderabad, the Irdai proposed to price Bima Vistaar, its ambitious mass product aimed at the rural markets, at R1,500 per policy. It is designed to provide a basic social safety net cover with combined features of life, health, personal accident and property insurances.
Attractive pricing
If the Irdai has it way, (the pricing is not officially announced yet) a life cover under Bima Vistaar will come at an annual premium of R820; mediclaim at R500; personal accident cover at R100; and property insurance as low as R80 per annum. If one takes the policy for the entire family on a floater basis, the premium will be printed in at R 2,420, along with an additional R900 for the rest of the family members. Bima Vistaar offers a sum assured for life, personal accident and property covers at R2 lakh each, while the health cover gets one R500 per day for 10 days with an upper level cap of R5,000 which is available without producing bills/documents. The property cover offers 50% automatic payout if the damage is 25%, and if the damage is 40%, 100% settlement or a maximum of R2 lakh per policyholder.
Being a unified platform, Bima Sugam will be integrated with various government databases, insurers, intermediaries, insurance repositories etc, for fetching customer details, providing product information, and buying and servicing insurance policies.
No paperwork
Traditionally, buying insurance involves lengthy paperwork and one also needs to maintain those physical documents for renewals/claims. Some private sector players are offering digital services especially since the pandemic. But Bima Sugam just eliminates the paperwork and one can simply have the policy in the electronic format.
Affordability at the core
Bima Sugam is all set to make insurance policies more affordable by doing away with or sharply reducing the agency commissions by making insurers sell policies directly through this platform, leading to lower premium payout for the policyholders who are mostly villagers. The regulator has even proposed that an insurer can offer a discount on premium rates for policies purchased directly through the platform. The regulator has decided to make it popular among agents by offering them a 10% commission.
One single window
With Bima Sugam, one no longer needs to keep a tab of different policies separately but can access all the policies –life, health and non-life insurance—in one single window. One can also check policy details and renewal dates through Bima Sugam.
Bima Vistaar: Key benefits
Bima Vistaar is an all-in-one insurance plan covering the policyholder for life, health, personal accident and property risks
The bundled policy, likely to be priced at Rs 1,500 per policy, seeks to make faster insurance penetration
Rs 2 lakh life cover for an annual premium of Rs 820, accident cover at Rs 100 premium
Health cover offers a daily payout of Rs 500 for up to 10 days and a maximum of Rs 5,000. Property cover offers 50% payout for 25% damage