Chennai, Aug 24 (IANS): Private non-life insurer Liberty General Insurance Limited hopes to close this fiscal with a health insurance premium of Rs 150 crore and is confident that its in-house processing of health claims would provide its policy holders superior service, said a top company official.
"Our health insurance business is growing well. We hope to close this fiscal with a premium of Rs 150 crore up from Rs 119 crore earned during 2017-18," Roopam Asthana, CEO and Whole Time Director told IANS.
He said the company will start processing the claims under its group health insurance policies in-house in three months time while the process of individual/retail health insurance claims has already begun.
Till now the company had outsourced the health insurance claims to a Third Party Administrator (TPA)/health insurance claims processing agency.
"One of the key issues in the insurance business is offering good experience to the policy holders at the time he makes a claim. In the case of a TPA it is not possible for an insurer to ensure the turnaround time promised to the policy holder each and every time," Asthana said.
"The other problem with the TPAs is that they don't have dedicated teams to handle claims of different insurers. As a result, a TPA official may not be aware of the entire policy conditions of each and every insurer," he added.
According to him, in insurance business, claims is the moment of truth for the customers.
"Since satisfied customers tend to stay longer with the same insurance company, we definitely expect Liberty Health 360-in-house claims processing department to act as a catalyst in retaining more of our customers," Asthana said.
However, he said the company did not have any problems with its sole TPA.
Citing the company's motor insurance portfolio, he said 85 per cent of the motor insurance damages are surveyed by in-house surveyors which has resulted in bringing down the turnaround time and also the policy holder complaints.
Asthana said currently there are 20 people in the health insurance claims processing team including qualified doctors and other medical experts.