Insurance: Over 90% policyholders want companies to publish monthly claim settlement numbers on websites

Nearly 93 percent of general policy holders want each insurance company to publish the data of total claims received, rejected and approved. The surveyed policyholders want this data to be published every month on the websites of insurers, revealed LocalCircles survey findings.

Notably, insurance regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India releases annual claim settlement ratios of individual insurers at the end of the year. The claim settlement ratio for FY 2022-23 was 98.64 percent, revealed the IRDAI data. 

Delay in processing the claim

When surveyors were asked about the difficulties they faced in getting an insurance claim processed in the past 3 years, 43 percent said they had problems in processing their health insurance claims while 24 percent faced difficulties with motor insurance and 10 percent with home insurance. 

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A number of respondents spoke about the bad experience they had in getting health insurance claim processed. The challenges included claims getting rejected on ground of passing off health condition as a PED (pre-existing disease) to getting a partial approval.

Some surveyors said that it took anywhere between 10 and 12 hours after the patient was ready for discharge only because health insurance claim was not being processed.

Different categories

In the above-mentioned survey, when surveyors were asked about different types of insurance policies they had bought, 82 percent said that they have motor insurance, 76 percent stated they have health insurance and 22 percent said that they have ‘home insurance’. It was based on a total of 9,410 responses.

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In view of the issues consumers tend to face in getting their health claims approved, LocalCircles platform carried out a national survey to understand how people buy general insurance, the kind of policies they buy and the issues they face.

The survey received over 39,000 responses from citizens in 302 districts of India. Out of these, 46 percent respondents were from tier 1, 32 percent from tier 2 and 22 percent respondents were from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.