Claim Settlement Ratio or CSR indicates how much the claim for death an Insurance provider settles in any Financial Year (FY). Its calculation includes a total number of received claims against the total number of claims settled. Higher claim settlement ratio means the likelihood of acceptance by the insurance company is higher for the claims.
Therefore, individuals should prefer insurance companies with high claim settlement ratio so that their claim is not rejected in the future. This is one of the key parameters in choosing a good insurance plan.
To know more about this, let’s take an example: Let us assume, a Life Insurance provider gets 100 claims and out of these claims, it settled 98. In this case, the claim settlement ratio will be 98 per cent, and the remaining 2% claims the Life Insurance Company rejected.
As claim settlement ratio is considered as raw data, it does not give a clear image of what type of products they settled. They can be ULIPs, Endowment plans, or Term Insurance Policies. Therefore, it is not the only criteria in deciding the performance of a Life Insurance provider.
Looking at the importance of the claim settlement ratio, I recently purchased the ‘ICICI Pru I-Protect Smart Term Insurance’ plan. Benefits like 34 critical illness coverage, large cover with a minimum premium amount, tax redemption, etc., are all covered in this plan.
With a claim settlement ratio of 98.6%, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is in the top 10 companies, which is what motivated me to opt for this plan.
ICICI Prudential Life insurance has continuously secured its position among the top 5 CSR organizations in India. There are many insurance products provided by ICICI Pru Life. However, two of them have become well-known – ICICI I-Protect term insurance plan and the Heart and Cancer Care plan.
Any individual who is in the age group of 18-65 years can consider this term insurance plan. ICICI I-Protect Smart Term Insurance plan provides critical illness benefit, death benefit, and premium’s waiver on disability. This term insurance plan covers more than 34 critical sicknesses as well as the accidental benefit.
To give you a rough breakdown of the plan, if a 30-year individual opting for this plan for Rs 1 Crore sum assured for 30 years, the annual premium works out to be Rs. 8,279 (Approx.). On the other hand, the ICICI Heart and Cancer Protection Plan is a health insurance plan that offers protection from cancer and heart diseases also.
For example, a person of 30 years can go for a health insurance plan of Rs 20 Lakhs (Rs Ten Lakhs for cancer and Rs Ten Lakhs for the heart) at the premium of Rs 2, 200 per annum.
Below is the latest IRDA Claim Settlement Ratio of ICICI Prudential Life insurance Company as per the Annual Report for 2017-18:
| Recent IRDA Claim Settlement Ratio for ICICI for the Year 2017-18 | ||||||||
| Total Claims Received | Claims Paid | |||||||
| Life Insurance Company Name | No of Policies | Benefit Amount
(in Rs Cr.) |
No of Policies | Claims Settlement
(% of policies) |
Benefit Amount
(in Rs Cr.) |
Claims Settlement
(% of Benefit Amount) |
||
| ICICI Prudential Life | 11459 | 777.00 | 11216 | 97.88% | 715.11 | 92.03% | ||
Conclusion:
- At the time of purchasing a life insurance policy, you must provide accurate information and make sure that all the paperwork is complete.
- The claim settlement ratio never talks about the policies’ type i.e., whether received claims were endowment plans or term insurance plans, money back plans.
- One can go for a Term policy as per the record of claim settlement. The other determining factors can be the cost of the premium, optional riders, features, your comfort level, and quality of service with the Brand.
- A person can purchase a Life Insurance plan from any Insurance provider of his/her choice. But, it should not cover any facts at the time of filling the form of a proposal. This will make sure that your claim for any unfortunate case is settled.
