Insurance products tailored for specific needs of women

Traditionally, women have been home makers. The scenario has changed drastically in recent times. In tandem, insurance for women has changed too. In India, in the early years of the insurance industry, the trend was to insure only male lives. The logic was the bread winner was the male and it was against his lost income that cover was required.

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A major additional disincentive was the extra risk to female lives that was an inevitable part of the childbirth process. All that has changed, with women rivalling men at the workplace. In addition, better education for the female child, better medical facilities for safer childbirth and post-natal care have all contributed to more and more insurance products that are women-specific.

In life insurance industry, women are broadly divided into three categories: Working women Women with income by way of interest, dividend, rent, and so on, that are taxable Housewives/home-makers who (in purely technical terms) do not have an income The first two categories are no different from their male counterparts, that is, they are treated at par with them for insurance purposes. A housewife, on the other hand, has her insurability tied to adequate life insurance cover for her husband, as well as his income. For instance, a housewife's life insurance cover cannot exceed her husband's.

Apart from this caveat, all basic covers such as personal accident, mediclaim and critical illness form a part of women's life insurance policies. Term insurance policies are the cheapest and can be bought by every female, working or not working. Along with that, she can opt for riders. LIC's Jeevan Bharati-I is one such plan exclusively for women. The plan provides benefits for accident, critical illness and congenital disability as optional riders. Its features have been designed keeping a women's specific requirements like encashment of survival benefit, flexibility to pay premiums in advance, option to receive maturity proceeds in the form of an annuity and auto cover.

Insurers like Bajaj Allianz have specifically designed policies for home-makers. Bajaj Allianz has two plans, Bajaj Allianz InvestGain and Bajaj Family CareFirst, with a rider especially developed for today's woman to enable her to take care of her family in times of crisis. There are also some special covers afforded in women's life insurance policies that include: Cover for certain female critical illnesses Occurrence of certain congenital disabilities in the new-born Cradle care - covers a newly born child's defects, deformity, malformation, congenital abnormality at the time of delivery There are exclusions to these special covers: These being for post-delivery complications, a still-born child, death of the mother during childbirth, miscarriage, infanticide, any defect that is not congenital, malfunctioning of any organ (as opposed to malformation) and any defect manifesting after 200 days of the delivery. Most pre-natal and birth-related policies have to be taken not later than the 20th week of pregnancy. These and other insurance policies can go a fair bit in reducing the monetary impact of the loss of the woman in a home.

The writer is chief editor, Apna Paisa

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