Insurers settled over 225,000 death claims on account of Covid: Irdai

Over 225,000 death claims due to the Covid were settled by insurance companies up to March 2022, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India said in its annual report

Over 2.25 lakh death claims due to the Covid-19 pandemic were settled by insurance companies up to March 2022, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) said in its annual report released on Thursday.

It further said the general insurers and stand-alone health insurers received a huge number of Covid treatment related claims which the industry handled "quite efficiently" and settled claims approximating to Rs 25,000 crore.

As per the data in the report, a total of 26,54,001 health insurance claims were settled.

Irdai said insurance companies settled over 2.25 lakh death claims on account the pandemic and paid Rs 17,269 crore towards claims up to March 31, 2022.

The life insurance industry paid benefits of Rs 5.02 lakh crore in 2021-22, which constitutes 73.1 per cent of the net premium.

LIC accounted for 70.39 per cent of total benefits paid and private insurers the remaining 29.61 per cent.

"In case of individual life insurance business, the life industry's death claim settlement ratio increased to 98.64 per cent in 2021-22 from 98.39 per cent in the previous year and the repudiation/rejection ratio decreased to 1.02 per cent from 1.14 per cent," the report said.

General and health insurers settled 2.19 crore health insurance claims and paid Rs 69,498 crore towards settlement of the claims. The average amount paid per claim was Rs 31,804.

The net incurred claims of the general insurers stood at Rs 1.41 lakh crore in 2021-22 as against Rs 1.12 lakh crore in 2020-21, an increase of about 26 per cent.