6 easy steps to get accidental insurance

Preparing for the traumas of an accident proves to be beneficial in the long run.

An accident occurs out of the blue and changes your life forever. There is never a chance to prepare yourself for the physical or financial impact of an accident. However, the worst is yet to come, when a person is ill-equipped to take care of the expenses related to an accident.

India is waking up to the perils of not having adequate accidental insurance. No accident insurance during such a traumatic episode can wipe out the family savings. Instead, preparing for this eventuality with a good accident insurance policy will not just give one peace of mind every night, but also take care of loved ones when the policy holder dies as a result of an accident.

A personal accident insurance policy takes care of the expenses associated with treatment, hospitalization and post-operative therapy. With these major expense heads taken care, there is no need to touch the family savings or sell off any assets to raise money.

Here are 6 steps to get accidental insurance online:

1. Do your research. Based on your needs from the accident insurance policy, you must jot down the features you are looking at, apart from the sum assured. You can go online to check the various accident insurance policies being offered by various insurance providers to arrive at a desired plan.

2. Choose the personal accident policy. Once you have a fair idea of which personal accident insurance policy you want, you should get details about it online. The insurance provider of that policy will have put up a detailed description of the policy’s features, benefits and clauses. If you still want more information, request a call back or use a chat online option if provided.

3. Get all the information. The insurance provider will have put up information about the policy’s features and benefits, as well as any variants of the policy. Gather all the details and calculate your outgoing for it in terms of premiums. Look for such features as cover for partial or complete disability, temporary or permanent disability, child education benefit (in case of policy holder’s death) and funeral expenses. The policy should cover the entire family.

4. Calculate the numbers. Use the site’s online calculation tool to exactly calculate the desired sum assured and the premiums to pay on a yearly basis. You can choose your preferred sum assured and tenure, and the calculator will compute the premium amount to the last decimal. At this stage, you are in a better position to judge if you still want to buy the accident insurance policy or not.

5. Submit the information and buy the policy. Once you have all the figures at your fingertips and have decided that the personal accident policy makes fiscal sense to you, you can choose to buy the policy immediately. The processing of the information will take some time, but your policy should be activated within days.

6. Renew the policy regularly. You can pay your premiums online and even file accident insurance claims over the Internet. Make sure to renew the policy regularly, and to even enhance the cover if possible. 

Secure your family with a family health insurance plan

Your worst nightmare is not the one where you or a loved one require hospitalisation – it is when you require hospitalisation and do not have health insurance.

We can never predict what the future will bring. One moment, we are successful, wealthy and in great health. But in the next moment, we may be bed-ridden, ill and facing bankruptcy. There is just a split second difference between the two, and you can do little to prevent a catastrophe from taking place.

Ekta Ruparel, a housewife, faced such a catastrophe a year ago. Driving home from a mall with her husband and son, their car met with a serious accident. “I was unhurt but my husband and son were injured. I had no access to my husband’s bank accounts, so I could not spend the money that was in his account. I had to borrow money from relatives to pay for the hospital expenses. I did not even have time to mourn when my husband passed away two weeks later.”

She believes that if she had pushed her husband to buy a good health insurance plan when everything was fine, her destiny would have been different. “I had to get a job to support the house and to repay all the loans. I wish we had taken insurance, then none of this would have happened,” she says.

Ekta’s story takes place with alarming regularity in many households in India. And yet, most people are still reluctant to take the family health insurance. A family health plan insulates the family against the financial shocks of accidents or illness. Lack of family health care insurance is the riskiest way to live in today’s times, when manmade and natural catastrophes are striking the world with regularity.

Shriram Iyer, a banker, had taken a personal insurance cover several years ago, but now has a comprehensive family medical insurance plan that also takes care of his aged parents. “Most people buying health insurance are only focussed on themselves. But what happens when one’s child is ill or one’s parent meets with an accident? Family health plans take care of these eventualities.”

When buying health insurance for the family, look out for family health plans that are offered on a floater basis. However, ensure that you renew them regularly and are careful with buying a plan whose premiums you can afford to pay. Study all the clauses carefully so that all bases are covered.

“I used to think that I will get the amount that I file a claim for,” says Esther Fernandes, a marketing professional. “However, when we admitted my father to hospital last year, I was stunned to discover that the family health plan imposed sub limits on the claim. There were limits imposed on everything, from the hospital room charges to total expenses. I had not studied what these sub-limits were. We had to pay a large chunk of money out of our pockets,” she says.

All in all, buying family medical insurance is the safest cushion one can provide for the whole family, whatever the future may bring.

*Characters in the article are purely illustrative.