If you are buying insurance like health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, etc. You must be observing an increment in the insurance premium prices. As the years pass by insurance premium prices are also on the rise and if you are wondering what is the reason for increased insurance premium prices? what can you do to reduce the insurance premium cost?
Why did rate hikes take place then there are two trends that are playing out in the insurance market term insurance has caught up in thein the Indian market over the last 10 years or so and throughout this period premium rates have been constantly plummeting at the same time insurers have had a more adverse.
Exclaims experience than they had anticipated in some of the customer segments now these two trends one of constantly plummeting premium rates and higher than expected claims are clearly not sustainable. So last year reinsurers raised the red flag they hiked their insurance premiums you will be aware that insurance companies do not keep the entire risk on their own books, they transfer some of it to insurance companies.
For this, they pay a premium to their insurance company so when reinsurers hide their premiums that forces insurance companies also pass on the rate hikes to customers so last year rate hikes had taken place in the range of 5 to 40 percent across insurers but why are rate hikes?
Why Are Insurance Premium Prices Increasing?
Why are insurance premium rate hikes taking place taking? there could be many reasons, here we will be discussing the possible reasons for the increase in insurance prices:
Global Pandemic
One reason is that the hikes in insurance premium rates have been taking place since the year 2020, and the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has not sunk in.
Now in both insurers and reinsurers are in a better position to assess the impact and thereby reprice their products accordingly.
Non Uniform Rate Hikes
And the second reason for the hike in insurance premium prices is that in the year 2020-2021 rate hikes had not taken place uniformly and across the board some insurance companies had hiked their rates others had not and even among those that had hiked their rates.
They had not hiked it uniformly across all market segments the insurance market can be divided into many segments based on, say age the amount of sum insured that you take whether you are a smoker or non-smoker.
The premium payment term that you choose so while rates had been hiked in some segments they had not been heightened.
Others what we are likely to see this year is that many of the companies that did not hike their rates last year will do so now and among those that had hiked it last year 2020 they will probably raise the rates in those segments where they are not heightened in those years.
There are a couple of points that could be brought to notice one despite these rate hikes the term premiums that we pay here in in India are among the cheapest in the Asian market.
And second term insurance is one of their most important products in our financial plans so the fact that rates are being revised should not deter us from buying term insurance to fulfill your needs.
How To Reduce The Insurance Premium Cost
If you are wondering how you can reduce the insurance premium cost, then the steps you can take to minimize your cost of purchasing term insurance products.
- The most obvious trick you can use is to go and buy immediately before the new rate kicks in another is if you are younger buy right away do not wait for a few more years when you are younger the term insurance premiums tend to be lower than you got to get locked into that rate for your life for the entire duration of the product.
- Term insurance is not like health insurance where the premium gets revised every two or three years, once you have started working and you have dependents buy the amount of term insurance that you are eligible for and every year or couple of years reassess whether you have the right amount of coverage.
Suppose that your liabilities go up your you take a home loan or something like an education loan these are large liabilities in that case be you. And you may need to add to your sum in short another thing that will help you save on the cost of term insurance is.
- If you do an online comparison go to the website of one of these ones of online insurance aggregators enter your profile and the website will throw up a whole list of insurance companies and their don premium rates for your profile choose something that suits your pocket buying online will also help because when you purchase online you do not have to pay the insurance agent’s commission.
- Also go for an appropriate premium payment option suppose that the term premium that you buy will last for is for has a total of 10 years of 30 years you can choose to pay the premium for 10 years 20 years or 30 years. When you choose a longer premium payment option that reduces your annual premium.
- Another thing you can do which will help at least psychologically is that you choose the monthly payment option instead of the annual payment option, for choosing the CSR once look at the claim settlement ratio (CSR) of the insurer that this is a figure that tells you something about the propensity of an insurance company to pay up.
- When an insurance claim arises the higher the number the better it is another key figure to look at is the solvency ratio this tells you something about the financial strength of an insurer and obviously you would like to work with a company that has a stronger which has stronger finances.
Conclusion
One last word on selecting term insurance is that don’t necessarily avoid a company that asks you to undergo a medical checkup a lot of insurance buyers tend to do that they prefer companies that will give them a product without asking them to undergo the medical check-up this is not the right attitude to take the reason being once you have undergone the medical checkup your purchase becomes more foolproof the insurance company will have fewer lesser reason or it will not be able will not be in a position to turn down your claim as and when it arises.
