Health insurance has emerged as a significant financing mechanism for healthcare. G Srinivasan, Chairman and MD, The New India Assurance, speaks about the evolution of this sector, upcoming trends, his company’s role in improving health insurance penetration, the way forward for the sector in India and more, in an exclusive interview with Lakshmipriya Nair
How has healthcare insurance evolved over the years and what are the trends in 2016?
Healthcare insurance has a history of almost 30 years in this country and it has evolved in a very big way. Especially in the last seven to eight years, there have been substantial improvements in the health insurance sector. Today, health insurance is very important to people. I think with increasing life spans, increasing medical advances and increasing cost of medical treatment, today, health insurance has become absolutely mandatory for every individual and every family, and people understand that. I would say that today the most popular and voluntarily sought after insurance is health insurance. Hence, this sector will continue to grow. In the last decade, it has grown by about 20 per cent on a year-to-year (y-o-y) basis. I expect the same trend to continue in the coming years.
