DRAFTING an exclusive Covid-19 policy can be challenging given the novelty of the pandemic, say insurance players. For some, insuring against Covid-19 and other such pandemics becomes a matter of adding on to existing products, such as with Lonpac Insurance Bhd (LPI).
“General insurance products for Covid-19 can be just extensions to our existing products,” LPI CEO Tan Kok Guan told FocusM.
Tan added that this covers travel personal accident, medical and business interruption insurance packages. He explained that the first two can be extended to cover hospital treatment for positive Covid-19 cases, including daily allowances while the insured is being hospitalised.
“Under business interruption insurance, the insured can extend the plan to cover loss of business arising from staff diagnosed with Covid-19, which would result in a closure of the premises by the authorities for sanitisation works,” Tan said.
Further, while costs needed to draft these extensions to existing plans were not too high, the difficulty lay in the pricing of the premiums, as there was not a lot of data and experience available for accurate pricing.
Manulife Insurance Bhd chief marketing officer Jason Lim agrees that pricing such plans can be difficult.
“When it comes to crafting an insurance package for Covid-19 or similar pandemics, we are not able to put a specific price to it, as it would largely depend on the situation at that time,” he told FocusM.
Lim noted that Manulife had been addressing this by offering life insurance policies that provide coverage for events caused by Covid-19, such as hospitalisation or death. This included a plan launched earlier this year, which covered critical events.
“Assuming a patient’s condition gets worse and the patient ends up in the intensive care unit for 10 continuous days due to Covid-19 or any other conditions, we deem this as a critical event and we will pay the full sum insured,” said Lim. – June 23, 2020
