JANUARY 18, 2018 BY HEALTHINSURANCEADVISOR
Policyholders can now purchase health insurance policies in just 3 minutes. Max Bupa Health Insurance has announced the launch of its new initiative called ‘AnyTimeHealth’ (ATH) through which investors can buy health insurance policies at an ATM. The company expects that the move will help them increase distribution footprint and increase the penetration of health insurance in India.
In a press release, the company said, “It is a completely automated, technology-based model with a simple interface that offers a comprehensive awareness-to-purchase journey, overcoming the procrastination hurdle experienced by many Indians.”
Policyholders need to just walk-in to the health ATM, fill the required details like email id, contact no and so on in the machine to receive automated health insurance policy recommendations within 180 seconds.
To start with, the company has decided to sell simple policies such as indemnity policies with pre-defined benefits. Indemnity based health insurance policies pay reinstatement value on hospitalization i.e. healthcare expenses. The machine will provide basic assessment of health condition such as body mass index, blood pressures and so on.
This ATH would not distribute its critical illness plans such as cover cancer, heart stroke and renal (kidney) failure.
Talking about Max Bupa’s latest innovation, Ashish Mehrotra, MD & CEO, Max Bupa said, “The overall penetration is still quite low with close to 80% of the Indian population still not covered under any form of health insurance. With the Max Bupa ATH machines we aim to democratize health by addressing the key issues and challenges faced by Indians on their buying journey. While we anticipate greater penetration for health insurance overall with the innovation, we also expect the Max Bupa ATH machines to increase our Bancassurance throughput by 2.5X and become an independent sales channel in the next 3- 5 years, comprising 15%-20% of our total digital sales.”
The ATH machines will be introduced in the market through the company’s Bancassurance partners such as Bank of Baroda. In the first phase, 20 ATH machines will be installed at partner banks’ branches across multiple cities.
