Growth Potential Of Health Insurance

In an exclusive interview with Riddhima Bhatnagar of business today, Krishnan Ramachandran MD and CEO Niva Bupa talks about the growth potential of the health insurance industry. He also tells that health insurance has the largest share of 40% in non- life insurance category and is the fastest growing sector. According to him it has a potential to capture 350 billion people.The focus of the industry is now to increase the penetration of the health insurancea and for this operators are investing in technology, talent and distributors. He also tells how the state insurance programs, industry initiative are building awareness among people. According to him, Covid has been an inflection point for the health insurance industry.On the rising medical costs he says that inflation is inevitable and instead of shocking the consumers by waiting for 2-3 years before revising rates they now pass on single digit inflation linked premiums each year. In terms of growth, he says industry will continue to grow at 17-18 % CAGR over next 5 yrs and in terms of health care spend globally countries spend 7-8% on healthcare and in India this number is 3-4% which is expected to grow.