In the absence of an individual health cover, moving on from your current employer could leave you stressed about not having any medical insurance, and rightfully so.
Depending only on the company’s health insurance has its downsides, especially when you ’re between jobs, or been laid off, or wish to take a respite.
What numerous don’t know is that you can convert your company’s health policy to an individual or family cover.
According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India’s( IRDAI) Health Insurance Regulations, 2016, workers covered by a company’s group insurance policy can resettle to an individual or family cover.
The launch date of an hand’s group policy will be considered for catching on staying period credit forpre-existing ails or for certain affections( similar as hernia or cataract surgeries) that aren’t covered in the first policy time in numerous cases.
Understanding how group insurance works
When a company buys a group insurance plan, a master policy is issued to the employer and all the workers come a part of the group policy.
Each hand is given a health card with all the necessary details. Grounded on the plan decided for by the employer, workers may have an option to add members of their family, including parents.
In utmost cases, the employer bears the decoration for the hand, partner, and children, but may ask the existent to contribute if parents are to be added.
The policy covers the entire group for a period of one time, after which the employers need to renew the plan. In case the employers are unhappy with the being insurer, they can explore other options at the time of renewal.
It’s important to flash back that formerly your employment with the current employer ends, you’ll no longer be covered under the company’s health policy.
Porting from group to individual cover
Still, individualities, including family members covered under a group insurance plan, can resettle to an individual or family health insurance policy with the same insurer.
In similar cases, you’re needed to apply to the insurance company to harborage the policy at least 45 days before your last working day with the employer. In case you ’ve not initiated the process, you get a window of five fresh days after your last working day to intimate the insurer about your decision to resettle to an individual or family policy.
Note that the portability option is applicable to the sum ensured that was decided for under the group policy, though you could request the insurer to enhance it.
The insurer may ask for fresh information before issuing you an individual or family policy. still, it’s the insurer’s appanage whether to issue the policy or not, and how it wants to price it, grounded on its underwriting guidelines.
Benefits transfer
When you resettle to an individual or family policy from a group plan, the time you have formerly spent under the colorful staying ages will also get transferred, which means that you aren’t needed to repeat the same again before filing a claim.
Also, according to IRDAI’s porting guidelines, if the staying period for a certain complaint or treatment under the individual or family policy is longer than under the group policy, also the insurer is needed to explicitly explain the fresh waiting period to the policyholder at the time of porting.
At the time of porting, individual members under the group policy are distributed staying period credits grounded on number of nonstop times of content. This is anyhow of whether or not the group cover had anypre-existing complaint and time- bound rejections.
While there exists an option to harborage from a group to an individual or family health policy, it’s judicious to have particular medical insurance with acceptable cover, in addition to your employer’s plan.
This will insure that you and your dependents have nonstop content anyhow of any turbulence on the job front. This will also lower the trouble and nebulosity around migrating from a group to an individual or family policy.