Aditya Birla Health Insurance is offering customers mental health support in terms of counselling and consultation, apart from hospitalisation expenses, under its new comprehensive health insurance policy.
The move comes after the insurer’s experience with a mental health helpline for customers during the Covid-19 lockdown that registered a lot of interest and calls.
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“Mental stress levels had gone up during the Covid-19 lockdown. People were at home, income levels in some cases were impacted, or just the pressure of dealing with so many things. So we started a mental helpline for our consumers free of cost. We were expecting not too many people to call because normally there is this taboo around that. But we were positively surprised that so many customers of ours actually use that facility,” said Mayank Bathwal, CEO, Aditya Birla Health Insurance, adding that they then decided to make it a part of the product offerings.
The insurer has recently launched a revamped version of its flagship product, Activ Health, which also offers customers access to mental counselling.
Under the facility, the customer can first call the helpline and talk to a counsellor and if the counsellor assesses that they need more detailed counselling support, then the product provides them that feature and they do not have to pay for it, Bathwal explained.
The insurer has tied up with Mpower, run by Neerja Birla, for counselling support.
“When we talk about mental health, the first thing is counselling support, and not necessarily anything to do with hospitalisation,” he pointed out, adding that the product not just covers mental health from a hospitalisation perspective but also includes mental counselling cost support.
Meanwhile, commenting on the health insurance sector, Bathwal said opportunities for the sector continue.
“It was already a very fast growing category. So my sense is that will continue. Covid has only increased the awareness level for health insurance, because people have realised that something like this can happen to any and everyone,” he said.
Between April and December 2020, Aditya Birla Health Insurance grew by 57 per cent with total gross written premium of ₹859 crore in the period.