Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Which Insurance Company is good?


Every one of us who buy an Insurance policy does so with the hope that his family is financially supported in case of his sudden death. The very basic intention to buy insurance policy is to protect our family.

But what if the Insurance Company rejects the claim made by your family? You paid the premium regularly to the insurance Company through out your life and the insurance company made a handful of profit but now denies paying insurance claim to your family? Off course there may be some errors (intentional & unintentional) from policy holder in some cases but many times Insurance Co play the trick and deny the claim to family.

So, Care should be taken by investors before selecting the Insurance Company. Investors should analyze the past Claim settlement ratio (Number of claims settled compared to number of claims made) of insurance companies which is available on IRDA website.

The below table shows percentage of claims settled compared to number of claims made in 2009 to 2010 :

LIC is the best and ranks first as it has settled 96 % of the claims made.


Insurance Company name
Claim Settelment ratio in %


LIC
96.54
HDFC STD LIFE
91.14
ICICI PRU
90.17
ING VYSYA
89.3
BIRLA SUNLIFE
89.09
RELIANCE LIFE
89.07
BAJAJ ALLIANCE
88.19
AVIVA
87.11
KOTAK
86.97
SBI LIFE
83.27
METLIFE
82.54
TATA AIG
78.17
BHARTI AXA
77.8
MAX NEWYORK LIFE
65.51
SAHARA LIFE
63.06
STAR UNION DAI -ICHI
58.33
INDIA FIRST LIFE
53.85
IDBI FEDERAL
49.52
AEGON RELIGARE
48
DLF REAMERICA
40
SRIRAM
39.54
FUTURE GENERALI
38.85
CANARA HSBC
38.71



Bottom Line: Do not buy cheap or low cost (low premium) insurance schemes suggested by the agents or Relationship managers. Check the credibility of the Insurance Companies before buying insurance schemes.

3 comments:

  1. very fine in terms of gathering info but we should look into the matter that as a insurance advisor plays in terms of policy selling and servicing the policy holders and some times these things plays a vital role in claim process.So what i feel is openly we cannot look to buy a policy by looking at the claim ration.

    There been a excellent products which can compete with so called LIC could not able to do with so much of history and back up and more over unclaimed dead funds.

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  2. Hi sunil, agreed to some extent on ur points, but fact of the matter is in terms of PERCENTAGE claim ratio matters most and not the product or service of the advisor or agent. Its bound duty of insurance co to settle the claim or else IDRA will show doors. Just think why private insurance companies has low claim ratio.

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  3. Hi Vikram,

    I completely agree with you on this issue. As now days after the entry of private players in insurance sector the competition has gone high and there are lucrative offers given by different companies. But when it comes to getting a claim LIC still holds the top position.

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