Portability simply refers to the facility of transferring a health insurance policy from one insurance company to another. This concept was introduced by IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) and is called as Health Insurance Portability. There may be different reasons for portability. For instance, you might not be satisfied with your current insurance provider’s services and hence you might want to move to a new insurer.
How does Portability in Insurance work?
The process is quite simple. You are required to submit a form which would state that you want to port your health insurance policy. This form should be submitted 45 days before the renewal date of your existing policy. The decision of accepting the policy will be taken by the new insurer within 15 days of submitting the form.
Benefits of Health Insurance Portability?
Some of the benefits of portability are:
- You can change your existing insurer if you are not satisfied with the existing insurer.
- The benefits of your previous insurance policy will continue to exist even with the new policy.
- You will be insured atleast up to the amount insured under your old policy.
- You can opt for any new individual or family insurance policy with the new insurer.
Some conditions
Some of the conditions that are attached to portability are:
- You can apply for portability only at the time of the renewal of the policy.
- You are required to submit the form 45 days before the date of renewal of the existing policy.
- The new policy is supposed to be in continuation to the old one. If you have not paid the premiums of the old policy your application for the new policy can be rejected easily.
- The new insurer has all the rights to increase the premium amount.
When you are not satisfied, a new insurer will provide you with a new policy (as a continuation of the old one) if you choose to change.
The most important thing is to research everything, and do it well before your current policy expires. Then when you change, you can have seamless health insurance cover with little worry that you are in between two insurers with no cover at all.
This information is one of the best I have come across regarding policies! It’s a piece of pie for the consumer to transfer the policy from one service provider to other. This will prompt the policy companies to offer the best service as there are chances for the users to change the provider. This enhances the service and scheme quality at once!