Pandemic leads to surge in insurance buying

BENGALURU: Nearly six months of complete and then partial lockdown due to Covid-19 appears to have led to a spike in sale of both term and health insurance cover, particularly among people aged 40-50 in Karnataka.The sale of term insurance policies in the state increased from 32% to 54%, from April- September, according to a recent survey by Policy Bazaar.

The sale of health insurance has also increased by 92% on the year and 25% from April- September.
The data showed the spike in the behaviour of people seeking term life insurance. Compared to the financial year 2019-20, there has been a growth of 21%.According to the report, around 64% of customers purchased term insurance cover of Rs 1 crore and above during April- September, 2020.

While people in the of 42-50 age group witnessed the highest increase in terms of insurance buying, year on year, by 95% in 2020, those in the age group of 31-40 years purchased the largest share of 54%. At present, 67% of Policy Bazaar traffic is from salaried employees and 33% from the self-employed category, the data showed. It also showed that 20% of people purchased individual policies online.

Around 43% people bought health plans with a cover of Rs 1 crore in Karnataka. Also 59% of people bought a family floater health plan with a cover of Rs 1 crore and 41% bought individual health plans. The age group of 26-45 years invested the maximum in health insurance, followed by the 46-60, age group. i.e. 20%, said Santosh Agarwal, CBO-Life Insurance, Policybazaar.com.

Amit Chhabra, Health Insurance, Head, Policybazaar.com, said, “A sudden medical emergency poses a huge threat to one’s accumulated corpus if he or she does not have adequate health cover. Keeping this in mind, buying health insurance at the right age is not only affordable but also makes sure that you stay financially secured against medical emergency. With medical inflation rising at double-digit pace, consumers from Karnataka are now looking for health insurance plans with higher sum insured.”