Understanding cashless hospitalization

The most useful insurance plans in health care are cashless hospitalization plans. We decode their meaning and significance.

With living expenses going through the roof every single month, it is important for every family in India to budget for the future. It is not enough to rely merely on your income to see you through a rainy day. You must actively invest in such instruments that help pay all your expenses during times of financial uncertainty.

The single most important factor that drains your precious savings is the area of healthcare. Medical treatment, diagnosis and medicine costs are quite high in India. The costs are exponentially higher for prolonged treatment of critical illnesses. Even just one visit to the hospital can empty your savings created over months. Hence, many people resort to buying health insurance plans that protect them and their loved ones from the high costs of healthcare in the future.

What is a cashless hospitalization plan?

A growing area of interest in health care insurance is the cashless hospitalization insurance plan. The advantage of investing in it is that it helps you start treatment on yourself or a loved one without having to pay admittance or treatment costs.

This is how it works: If you have a cashless hospitalization plan and you need to get admitted to hospital, you can simply show your policy credentials to the hospital and get admitted at once. The hospital also starts treatment immediately. This saves precious time during critical health issues; there is no need to scramble to collect money for admittance. Meanwhile, you do not need to pay treatment costs or the room/bed charges. The hospital settles the bills with your insurance provider.

What you must know about cashless health plans

• They are applicable to both emergent and non-emergent cases. Some policy holders actually plan their surgeries well in advance for a convenient time, if they have cashless hospitalization to back them.
• They cannot be used in every hospital or treatment centre. The cashless plan can be used in network hospitals only (also known as ‘participating hospitals’). Your insurance provider will give you a list of network hospitals in your city or town, so you can avail of cashless hospitalisation only at any of the listed facilities.
• The policy holder(s) must only hire an ambulance and reach the closest network hospital in an emergency. This is beneficial for people who are new to a city and do not know any people who can help transport them or their loved ones in case of a medical emergency.
• Cashless hospitalization plans are available for individuals, families and even senior citizens. 

The importance of being earnest…about your future

What would you rather choose – an uncertain future or financial security for your family? The choice is obvious, and the answer lies in term insurance.

Of all the things in the world, what is most important to you?

• Financial security
• The health of my family
• Freedom from financial worry for my parents
• All of the above

If you choose Option #4, it means that you are sufficiently invested in your loved ones’ security to provide them with whatever they need to stay happy and healthy always. This includes investing in your children’s education, maintaining your parents’ home, setting up a savings account for your spouse, investing in property for your family…the list of things to do for your loved ones’ happiness is endless.

And yet, you may have missed out on the most important investment of all – taking a term insurance plan to look after your family in your absence.

Why taking term insurance helps

You can guarantee that all of your loved ones – parents, spouse, children, siblings – will realise their dreams while you are present with them, but what happens when you are not? Do you have a lot of money stashed away in savings that will pay all your loved ones’ expenses for years to come? Will your investments be enough to fund their every need? If not, it is time to take a term insurance plan.

A term insurance policy is one of the simplest life insurance products in India today. It has an affordable premium amount, a high sum assured and a term (tenure) of 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. Generally, term plans are beneficial for those who do not wish to spend a large amount of money on expensive policies, while also receiving sufficient life coverage. Also, you can easily buy a term policy online. Many premier insurance providers in India allow customers the chance to purchase a term plan online without a medical examination first.

Thus, though the term insurance plan does not have maturity benefits, its high sum assured is more than sufficiently prepared to deal with your loved ones’ many requirements in your absence. From paying for children’s education to their weddings, from financing parents’ or spouse’s medical emergencies to repaying unpaid debts, term insurance plans have a lot of important uses for your loved ones. Their primary function is to keep your family safely protected from any financial uncertainty in your absence.

What could be a better plan than that?

Did you just buy a car? Here’s what you do next

Your duty as a car owner is complete when you get your car documentation right and take motor insurance.

Most people who do not own cars can scarcely comprehend the psyche of those who do. The average car owner might seem obsessed or even borderline fanatical about his car, and with good reason, too! For a car owner, his car is not just his private vehicle that transports him around the city. It is also his sanctuary, companion and guide every time he takes the wheel. Naturally, he is a little protective about his dream machine!

But for most car owners, the idea of ‘car maintenance’ starts and ends with servicing the car regularly and driving safely. Other tasks like getting the PUC done and insurance premium payment flit in and out of their horizon occasionally. If you are a car owner who thinks like this, here’s what you need to do:

Take insurance first, do other things later

After you purchase your car and get the necessary documentation ratified, it’s time to move to the next step – taking car insurance. But many people try to skip this step, deeming insurance an unnecessary expense. However, taking car insurance is mandatory in India, so every car owner must have a motor insurance plan. Take an insurance plan before you throw a celebratory party for friends and family.

How to take insurance

You can easily take online insurance for your car. All major insurance companies in India offer car owners the option of purchasing and renewing car insurance online. It is fairly simple to take online insurance for your car. Just log on to the insurer’s website, fill in the car details and the plan you want in the application form provided, calculate your premium payable, make your final selection and pay for the plan online.

But why take insurance at all?

…Because you need to be protected from accidental injuries and potentially fatal wounds every time you take the wheel. Your car insurance pays the costs of treatment and hospitalisation in case of an accident.

…Because other drivers and pedestrians must also be protected, in case of an inadvertent accident caused by you. A comprehensive car insurance plan includes a Third Party Liability (TPL) component that helps take care of legal costs and liabilities in such a case.

…Because it gets your car serviced for free. Insurance providers have a network of service centres where you are liable to get a free annual service and any repair work done by lieu of being a policy holder. Without an insurance policy, you would have to shell out these costs from your own pocket.

Besides, taking car insurance gives you and your loved ones peace of mind every time you take the wheel. This is an important benefit that far outweighs the cost of insurance. 

Endowment policies: Safeguarding future generations

Taking an endowment plan ensures protection and stability for your loved ones. We explain how they work.

Life is such that it tests one at various points in time. It can be sweet and rosy one moment, and depressing the next moment. But while one may have no control over one’s destiny, one may at least try to wrest some control over how one fares financially during an obstacle.

There are ways to secure one’s finances for the future, so that the family’s dreams may remain on course for successful fruition! We refer to a useful insurance product known as the ‘endowment policy’. Read on to know how it can help one realise their loved ones’ goals with not much expense in the present moment.

Understanding endowment insurance

An endowment life policy is a policy that has the dual benefit of life protection as well as regular savings to grow your wealth for the future. It encourages and rewards the savings habit by helping the policy holder create a large corpus of money over a period of years. This corpus is given to the policy holder when the plan matures, and it is in reality an appreciation over the money invested through the years.

The premiums paid by the policy holder are split in two parts: one part pays the premium, while the other is invested in equities. This latter component gets capital appreciation and helps pay the bonuses on the policy.

The calculations in endowment policy

When the endowment insurance matures, the policy holder gets the money in the form of a terminal bonus and a reversionary bonus, plus the sum assured. The bonuses are paid annually.

• If the policy has a premium of Rs 21,000 with a Policy term of 25 years and Sum assured = Rs 5 lakh, with the average bonus declared during these years as Rs 48 per Rs 1,000 of the sum assured, it would amount to Rs 24,000 per year.
• Thus, the bonus would be Rs 6 lakh for 25 years. Assuming the plan pays a terminal bonus of Rs 5 lakh (this is an arbitrary number for calculation), the total monies the policy holder gets are Rs 15 lakh. However, the holder has paid premium of Rs 21,000 x 25 years = Rs 5 lakh.
• This means that the endowment plan has given returns at 12% [Total gains/total premium x 100 / Total tenure]

Helping to strengthen the family’s finances

Not only does the endowment life insurance provide life protection, it also gives stable and steady returns over a period of time. The money that comes by way of the plan maturity can fund a variety of expenses, from children’s education to making a down payment for a house. More importantly, it helps keep the family afloat during a financial emergency.

Blood and sweat goes converting a house to a home…

…and insurance helps protect it. Taking home insurance safeguard your precious home from attack and damage.

Buying one’s own home is a cherished dream for most people. Whatever one may or may not achieve in life, one ardently wishes to achieve the dream of buying a house. An owned home is a prized asset that keeps one safe from the outside world. It is as important to one’s emotional wellbeing as the presence of loved ones and a stable job.

But buying a home is not easy. People spend many years repaying their home loans and spend a lot of money in designing the home to fit their tastes. Both home purchase and renovation are costly, time-consuming affairs that test one fortitude to its absolute limits. It is hard work to buy and take care of the house, and keep it in good condition for years to come.

And yet, your home is vulnerable to attack and damage. Protect your precious home with the best home insurance policy in India today.

Why take home insurance?

Home insurance is, in layman’s terms, a protection policy for your home just like a health policy is a protection policy for an individual. It keeps your home safeguarded from a variety of eventualities, such as:

• Theft or break-ins
• Arson
• Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, lightning strikes, hurricanes, etc.
• Accidents such as fire and partial/complete collapse of the building structure

Whether the catastrophe is man-made or natural, the health insurance plan helps you rebuild your home and more importantly, replace your valuable belongings that may be stolen or damaged. The best home insurance policies cover the factors listed above and also provide coverage for the home and its contents. Hence, you can even insure your valuables such as expensive art work, jewellery and electronic gadgets.

Some excellent home insurance plans also insure your belongings if you live in a rented premises.

Breathing easy with home insurance

Home insurance policies ensure your continual peace of mind about your home. Instead of worrying about what you’ll find when you return home from work or after a long vacation, you can install sophisticated surveillance systems and burglar alarms that deter attempts to break in and enter in your absence. Further, you can bolster these measures with a comprehensive home insurance plan that pays to rebuild your home and replace your precious items.

It does not do to worry constantly about the health of your home. Just like you took a health insurance plan for yourself and your loved ones, go ahead and take home insurance for your house so that you can breathe easy when you’re away.

Sports as a Career

Back in the 1980s, most youngsters in India had a limited set of career options they could choose from. These were careers that were considered safe by the parents and since they were safe because countless others had already opted for becoming a doctor, engineer or lawyer before. Those children who harbored thoughts of becoming professional sports persons were gently but persistently dissuaded from pursuing sports as a means of earning a livelihood.

Changing Face of Sports Careers

Since the 1980s, there has been a sea change in the way the entire country looks at sports as a career. Today, it is no surprise to see top sports persons earn millions from not just playing sports but from endorsements and other avenues. Sports stars are no less than actors or other celebrities and the media follows their every move hungrily.

The T20 cricket world cup and the Indian Cricket Leagues that have sprung up and brought club-class cricket to spectators is a well-known phenomenon. The huge amounts of money that is poured into cricket has led to a maturity in the revenue models that were hitherto associated with sports. Whereas 20 years back, an international or national level sports person had no option but to to fade into obscurity, ignored by the media and their achievements forgotten by those around them. The influx of media attention on sports has helped to develop a platform where players can be recognized and the rest of the country can get to know about their achievements. Not just in playing sports, but a number of related options have opened up in the sports-related industry. Sports marketing, management, administration and training have emerged as new areas. So have sports medicine, nutrition and even sports law. The latter is indicative of new areas where sports and other professions overlap each other, such as sports journalism.

Sports & Business Sense

Traditionally, a sports person was not expected to be good at business matters. As a professional sportsperson, if you had life insurance and a term plan, that was the limit of your forward planning. All that was required was a passion for the game and years of hard work. The hard work usually translated into a coaching or training job when the person has retired from active sports. Sports-related injuries also take their toll over time and many have to step down due to this reason. Many young athletes have had to step down from promising futures in sports due to injuries. Usually, at which point, it is back to the life insurance and term plan calculations, however insurance payouts vary according to the premium chosen and the type of injury. What insurance does is provide the necessary peace of mind to focus on getting back into the game.

Road Trip Tips

Let's say the company you work for decides to shift you to another town. The way things stand, this other town is not too far off and you have already fixed a date for the packers and movers to shift your entire household kit. This usually leaves us with the strange space of having to figure out exactly when should you travel and how much should you take along with you. Actually, how much you take along with you will depend on what you leave out of the truck from the packers and movers and how much luggage you can carry. So okay, you have got the household kit organized, and you have an idea of what will fit into the three bags that you need to survive anywhere and in whatever circumstances. That leaves the car.

At this point, the imagination drifts a little spark down certain neural passages in your brain and you get the bright idea of putting your bags in the car and driving down. However, just like you have a life insurance policy as a backup plan for your family’s future, you need to plan for all contingencies for the road trip.

Designated Driver Duties

Just Kidding: If you are going to take the car, then keep in mind that for the duration of the journey, your car becomes your mobile habitat. Remember how dirty train compartments get with the temporary inhabitants they suffer? Well, a day's driving and you can be equally callous to your earlier standards of cleanliness. Keep this in mind if you have kids and seriously consider how to childproof your car for the trip.

Tune-up: Take the car in for a check-up before taking it out on the highway. Tires, brakes, lights, horn, battery, air conditioner, oils and fluids, coolant and drive belts, get them all checked by a good mechanic.

Sleep Well: No jokes. Avoid the farewell party on the night before and get a full night’s rest. There really is no fun in driving hours on end on a hangover and your mouth feeling like shoe leather. Don't forget, drowsy drivers eventually die by their own hand.

Emergency kits: Pack a blanket, flashlight, jumper cables for starting the car in case of a dead battery, tire changing or repair kit, spare parts such as fuses, bulbs, and other sundry things that might strike you as useful. Don't forget to include a first aid and medical kit.

Do remember to carry all your documents safely with you, including driver’s license, passport, life insurance policy, birth certificate and school records.