Kathmandu. With increasing competition among life insurance companies and the number of large insureds, the amount of claim payments is also gradually increasing. According to the Nepal Insurance Authority, the average claim payment amount has also increased fivefold in the last 5 years due to increasing claim payments.
According to the authority, in the fiscal year 2076.77, life insurance companies have paid an average of Rs 210,186 to the insured. These insurers had paid a total of Rs 22.33 billion for a total of 106,239 insurance claims. By the last fiscal year 2080.81, the average claim payment amount had increased to Rs 1,145,462. In the last fiscal year, life insurance paid a total of Rs 66.58 billion for 280,151 claims.
According to the periodic data published by the authority, along with the number and amount of claims paid, the number and amount of claims outstanding have also increased. In the fiscal year 2076.77, the number of claims outstanding was 12,632, while by the last fiscal year, this number had increased by more than 4.5 times to 58,125. In the fiscal year 2076.77, the amount of claims outstanding was Rs 2.95 billion. By last year, this amount had increased to Rs 5.81 billion.
According to the authority, there are different reasons for the increase in both the number and amount of outstanding claims. In recent years, both the sales and number of claims for term insurance policies have increased. In addition, with the number of large sum insured policies, the amount of outstanding claims for such policies has also increased. The amount of money to be paid has also increased due to the tendency of life insurers to reject claims with large sums of insurance easily, but after the old health test reports reveal that the insured has a serious and chronic disease at the time of claim payment.
When life insurers pay death claims with large sums of insurance (general and Rs. 5 million or more) or in the event of the insured’s death within a very short period of insurance (one month to one or two years), they are classified as suspicious and conduct thorough investigations, which leads to a tendency for claims to be paid for a long time.
Even if the concerned branch of the authority calls the head of the insurance company’s claims department and pressures him to pay the claim immediately, if the insured does not submit sufficient documentary evidence for the claim, the claim is not paid. Department heads claim to be waiting.
