Here is how your insurer has performed in terms of settling claims during Covid times

One of the best ways to evaluate the performance of a life insurance company is to look at how it has fared in terms of settling claim requests of your individual clients especially during tough times like the pandemic.

Between April 2020 and March 2021, when our country was battling with the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Max Life, Aegon Life and Bharti Axa Life were the top three companies in terms of claim settlement ratio.

The claim settlement ratio indicates no. of claims that an insurer has settled compared to no. of request received during a financial year. This ratio is a measurement used to assess the reliability of an insurance company in paying the claims. A higher ratio indicates that the insurer has performed better in addressing the claims it receives.

IRDAI data shows that Max Life has settled 99.35% of the total individual death claims received during FY 2020-21. The insurer was at the top in claim settlement ranking of individual death claims in the preceding financial year as well.

Aegon Life and Bharti Axa followed Max Life with claim settlement ratio of 99.25% and 99.05% last financial year. Both the insurers have improved their ranking drastically.

LIC India, the biggest life insurance company in India, has settled 98.62% of the total individual death claim requests in FY 2020-21. The individual death claim ratio of LIC India has improved from 97.64% in FY 2018-19 and 96.69% in FY 2019-20.

On the other hand, the individual death claim settlement ratio of private insurers has also fallen to 97.02% in FY 2020-21 from 97.18% in 2019-20.

Top companies, which performed well in the past like HDFC Life, SBI Life and Tata AIA have witnessed their claim settlement ratio in individual death declining drastically. Other underperforming companies in the claim settlement ratio when compared to the preceding financial year were Ageas Federal, Canara HSBC OBC and Star Union.

On the other hand, companies that outperformed in terms of claim settlement metric were Aegon, Bharti Axa, Edelweiss Tokio, Kotak Mahindra, LIC and Sahara.

Overall, the life insurance industry has settled 98.39% of the total individual death claim settlement ratio by paying over Rs.26,421 crore in FY 2020-21. Of the total 11.01 lakh claim requests, insurers have settled 1.084 lakh claims and repudiated 12,600 claims.

Individual death claims of life insurers (FY2020-21)