Aegon Religare files for online health plan

Aegon Religare, which was the first insurer to introduce an exclusively online insurance plan in October 2009, is planning to introduce more such products.

According to company's chief marketing officer Yateesh Srivastava, it has already filed for an online health insurance plan with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), and is in the process of filing for another pure protection plan.

“The online plans have a significant pricing differential due to lower distribution costs, compared with offline products. For the same cover, online plans would be 58-60 per cent cheaper,” he told newspersons here on Friday. In the next two quarters, the company would introduce hybrid plans to offer a complete portfolio.

He announced the public launch of its online protection plan, iMaximize, designed for high networth individuals and carrying an annual premium of Rs 1 lakh and above. As part of a soft launch a few weeks ago, he said, the plan was introduced to its existing customers and received total first-year premiums of Rs 8.17 crore till now.

He said the customers were taking plans with higher sum assured online compared with offline.