Insurance By Choice

Bupa planning to enter into Indian insurance market. Sydney will be the base camp for launching their operations in India. Bupa is planning to enter via joint venture with a Indian Health insurer. Details aren't disclosed yet but they are eying something big in India pretty soon. Bupa also offers Car, Travel & Home insurance.

SBI and BNP Paribas Assurance, jointly plans to launch health insurance products by July, 2008. They have already applied to IRDA and are waiting approval of same.

In any normal cashless health insurance policy, cash is usually paid to the hospital. In the proposed policy by SBI, the insured will get some amount in cash whenever an ailment which is covered by the insurance policy is detected. The mediclaim will provide insurance cover for life threatening ailments like heart attack, cancer and blood pressure.

Since IRDA announced in December 2007, allowing car insurers to decide premiums, premiums have fallen drastically. Car Premiums are as much as 30% cheaper now as compared to last year. The focus is clearly on adding more and more retail customers. Commercial vehicles & Two-wheelers have also seen a drop of 20%.

In 2007, the insurance premium for Honda City was around Rs 20,760 in the city of Mumbai. This year it is at around 15,770. There is a immense competition prevalent among car insurance companies at the moment. If you want to insure a Tata Indica through ICICI Lombard, you will need to pay around Rs 11,724, whereas National Insurance Company is offering insurance at Rs 8,048 for the same vehicle.

One point which is quiet clear is that this competition is going to make customer the king and they are going to benefit a lot by each coming year.