Insurers may reduce premium for healthy customers

With the IRDAI recently allowing life companies to incorporate wellness into their policies, life insurers are working on their plans to offer wellness benefits.

Tata AIA Life Insurance plans to bring its foreign partner’s ‘Vitality’ programme to India, while Max Life has incorporated wellness into a critical illness rider that it launched recently. The private insurer’s ‘critical illness and disability rider’ comes along with a ‘Max Fit’, a comprehensive wellness app designed to lead customers on a path of protection through holistic fitness and wellness.

Under Tata AIA’s Vitality programme, the company tracks and rewards with lower premium those policyholders who undergo regular health checks, eat right and live healthy. “The idea is that the healthier you are, the more benefits you get. AIA has had tremendous success with this. In India, the regulatory framework had to allow such products, and this happened only recently,” said Tata AIA Life Insurance MD & CEO Naveen Tahilyani.

Tata AIA has already filed the product with the regulator and is awaiting its approval. The private insurer has tied up with South African insurer Discovery, which came up with the Vitality concept. In India, it has partnered Practo and second-opinion consultant Medix. “We are working out propositions that we can take to our customers, like telemedicine and consultation,” said Tahilyani.