New India Assurance looks to lower health-loss ratio to 95%,

State-run New India Assurance is looking at bringing down its health-loss ratio to 95 per cent in the current financial year and hopes to break-even in the segment by FY20, a top company official has said.

In FY18, the largest general insurer's health-loss ratio had come down to 103 per cent from 114 per cent.

"We will be bringing down the health-loss ratio. This year (in FY19), it will come down to 95 from 103 per cent. To break-even, the ratio has to come down to 85 per cent, which will happen in the next one year later (FY20)," chairman and managing director G Srinivasan told PTI.

The company's health insurance portfolio consists of retail (30 per cent), group health (60 per cent) and government businesses (10 per cent).

In the last financial year, the state-run insurer had taken a slew of steps to bring down its losses from the health insurance portfolio.

"The group health insurance is a major area of concern where we have done a substantial repricing this year. We have also walked away from businesses where we did not get the right price," he said.

The state-run insurer said there is further scope for repricing in group health insurance premium.

"In case of group health, there is further scope of repricing. At every renewal, we can look at the claim experience and reprice it. So, there a little more scope (to reprice) in this portfolio in the course of the current year and that is why we are saying that the health-loss ratio will come down to 95 per cent in FY19," Srinivasan added.

He said the repricing in group health insurance premium varies in the range of 10-40 per cent.

In the quarter to March, the insurer reported a steep 39.3 per cent fall in net profit at Rs 336 crore as against Rs 553 crore in the year-ago period.

On the claim settlement side, the company has recruited many doctors and is also in the process of recruiting more doctors to manage the claims professionally.

"We are also using our own third party administrator (TPA)- Health Insurance TPA India, " he said.

Health Insurance India TPA is co-promoted by four state-run general insurers and GIC RE.

Its March quarter net premium also fell 3.9 per cent to Rs 5,215.46 crore from Rs 5,428 crore. It was listed in the December 2017 quarter.

For the full financial year, the insurer reported a massive 118 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 2,201 crore, against Rs 1,008 crore.

Its gross written premium rose 15.3 per cent to Rs 26,554 crore in FY18 from Rs 23,020 crore in FY17.