With today’s youth getting more and more health conscious, insurance companies are all out to increase their penetration by offering policies with wellness benefits. While few players such as Cigna TTK and Max Bupa have been at it, Aditya Birla Health from the Birla group has been adopting an aggressive approach.

The company recently launched its new health plan Activ Assure — Diamond that offers wellness benefits and a comprehensive hospitalisation cover with sum insured restoration benefit.

Aditya Birla Health is a JV between Aditya Birla Nuvo and MMI Strategic Investments, a South Africa-based financial services group that operates in 17 countries across the globe and is known for its wellness and rewards programmes in health insurance.

What it covers?

Activ Assure – Diamond offers a sum insured of ₹2 lakh to ₹2 crore. The policy is comparable with the standard mediclaim policies in the market, with a 30-day initial waiting period and a two-year waiting for specific treatments such as cataract and joint replacements. Pre- and post-hospitalisation expenses are covered for 30 and 60 days respectively. A total of 586 day-care procedures (where hospitalisation is less than four hours) too are covered.

It also has a no-claim bonus benefit — with SI increasing by 10 per cent every no-claim year to a maximum of 50 per cent. The policy offers restoration benefit for SI, which is useful when a person in a family uses up the entire SI in a floater cover. The reload is done up to 150 per cent of SI to a maximum of ₹50 lakh.

The differentiator with Activ Assure – Diamond, is the wellness benefit.

Through its HealthReturns programme, the policy incentivises customers who maintain good health. The consumer is rewarded in the form of points that can be used for health-related expenses, including buying medicines, diagnostic tests, day care treatment, out-patient expenses and alternative treatments and towards the payment of the subsequent year’s premium.

HealthReturns feature works this way. The policyholder has to download the company’s ‘Activ Health’ app and get the ‘Healthy Heart Score’. The next step is to work on improving the score by getting active and engaging in wellness activities. This could be a fitness programme at a gym, swimming, yoga or simply running every morning. The app will track the number of ‘Active Dayz’ you had in a month with one Active Day being 30 minutes at the gym or burning 300 calories or 10,000 steps a day. One can earn up to 30 per cent of premium as HealthReturns by completing 13 Active Dayz every month.

If you do not engage in any fitness activity but still believe you lead a healthy life, you could opt for getting a health assessment done from the fitness centres accredited with the company.

Diagnostic tests are done at the company’s expense twice a year in the gap of six months. Based on the test results, you will be categorised ‘green’, ‘amber’ or ‘red’. If you fall under the ‘green’ category, you will earn 30 per cent of premium as HealthReturns (a year) that is equivalent to 13 Activ Dayz; if it’s ‘amber’, it will be 12 per cent, and 6 per cent if it is ‘red’.

Our take

Aditya Birla Health entered the insurance market in October 2016. So there is no track record of its performance on claim settlement. Customers have only the ‘Aditya Birla’ brand to trust.

For anyone with a disciplined and healthy lifestyle, this policy will help save on premium.

The policy is not expensive relative to other mediclaim products in the market; you do not have to spend more on the wellness benefit as it is built into the base policy.

Premium on Activ Assure – Diamond for a SI of ₹5 lakh for a 40-year-old male is about ₹7,000. The same individual can get a no-frill standard medi-claim policy for ₹7,000-9,000 a year from the market.

What you need to take note of is the pre-existing disease waiting period is four years under the plan.

Apollo Munich Optima Restore and Royal Sundaram Lifeline Supreme offer a three-year waiting period.

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