General Insurance: Rakesh Jain

Rakesh Jain, Chief Executive Officer of Reliance General Insurance, answers your questions

When buying a health insurance cover, should one opt for a plan sold by general insurers or the one sold by life insurers?
General insurers predominantly provide indemnity-based health policies, which pays for the medical expenses incurred during hospitalisation.

Health products of life insurance companies, in contrast, are mainly fixed benefit-based, which would require to be calibrated to anticipated health expenses. Another point to consider is that the health products of non-life companies provide the customer the right to portability, that is, shift to another company. And, if a customer decides to change his insurer/product, he will get full credit for the pre-existing diseases under portability.

One should decide on the cover based on their requirements while seeking health insurance covers. In addition, care must be taken while deciding on the services offered on the relevant health cover like service levels and guarantees embedded in the product and network of cashless hospitals under the insurer.

My house was built 12 years ago. I had insured it initially for a few years but the policy has not been renewed in the past five years. Can I buy a new policy for the house now? Which electronic items do these policies cover?
You should opt for a long-term cover (up to 20 years) under the Standard Fire and Special Perils Home Package policy, which would safeguard you against lapse in insurance cover. Also in long-term cover, you can get up to 50 per cent discount in premium based on the tenure of policy. While buying the policy, ensure you take adequate coverage, considering effective value and inflation, etc, to avoid any under-insurance.

The policy can include all household electronic equipment (like washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, music system, LED TV, etc) in addition to furniture, fixtures and fittings. As a good measure, one should ensure that appropriate value and identification number (like serial number) are recorded on the policy.

The views expressed are the expert's own. Send your queries to yourmoney@bsmail.in