Antony Jacob,
CEO,
Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company Ltd

Antony Jacob, CEO, Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company Ltd highlights the need for taking health insurance to all sections of society

What is the current market size of the health insurance sector in India?
Health Insurance is an important and a vast subject. The industry is Rs 115,000 crores as of March 2013 and is growing at 20 percent every year. The opportunity for a player like Apollo Munich is quite exciting as it has potential of keep growing by 20-25 percent every year for a long time to come, because even today few people have private Health insurance in comparison to other insurance.
Private health insurance is in the range of 75 million people out of 100+ million population. So there is a significant gap to be filled. Healthcare expenditure is close to USD 60 billion and a big chunk of it is financed out of pocket. So we see a significant opportunity to increase the penetration and have a good business model.

Please tell us about your operations.
Apollo Munich is little over five years old. We have about five million lives covered already. We are growing better than our plan “ we should be a 700 + crore company this year catering to all segments of the population.
We cater to people below poverty line, as we participate in the RSBY scheme, designed by the Ministry of Labor. We do above the poverty line with products which are easy to understand, small sums insured, relatively cheap from 50,000 to 1 lakh. We also do upper-end, where we have sums insured to up to 30 lakhs.
We distribute our products largely through individual agents, close to about 30,000 of them and proud to say that we have customers across India, North, South, East and West, supported by over 55 offices.

What is your strategy to tap in the rural market, the majority share of the Indian economy?
The most important thing is to understand what the requirement of the rural market is and then to build a product which suit their requirements. So if we have the product that works well in Bombay, Bangalore, and New Delhi might not work equally well in Tier-III cities. With the distribution partners, we try and understand what is required in that place and as being told to you we have the capability that we believe is second to none in designing it. We have tremendous amount of learning from markets like Meghalaya, Nagaland, Bihar and Maharashtra where we participated in RSBY schemes, we have actually gone to places where very few people of India have travelled to. So to draw attention of the rural folks we do have experience as to how to broadcast or make them understand what Health insurance, why it is required and how to get it. We also have experience in terms of tying up with hospitals in the rural areas, which we have done.

Is there a need to educate the working class about health insurance?
The industry has started an initiative – the General Insurance industry, wherein GI, IRDA and Finance Ministry have started advertising in different media, in terms of the benefits of health insurance. Commercials on radio and TV are educating people and encouraging them to think of Health Insurance and buy it. Cover Story

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