Introduction

Niva Bupa Health Insurance recently launched its all new feature rich health insurance plan called Niva Bupa Aspire. This plan promises some crazy benefits like maternity, guaranteed cover to spouse without any waiting period via you and getting treatment anywhere around the world through its borderless feature. All this sounds great on paper. But is this plan good for you? What are its pros and cons? Is the company settling claims smoothly and more importantly, should you buy this plan? 

We will look into all this and much more.

So that you can decide whether to Niva Bupa Aspire plan for yourself and your family or not.

Plan Benefits

First things first. Let’s talk about the benefits.

The plan comes in 4 variants which are:

1. Gold+,
2. Diamond+,
3. Platinum+ and
4. Titanium+.

In-patient Hospitalisation:

All the expenses under inpatient hospitalisation and all day care treatments are covered up to sum insured. In Gold+ variant, you can choose any room up to Single Private AC Room. But there is no restriction on room rent in any of the other variants. You can choose to stay in a deluxe, suite or presidential room as well. So this plan scores well in this department.

Coverage:

• You also get cover for road and air ambulance on actuals for reaching the hospital.
• Modern treatment, domiciliary treatment and organ donor expenses are also covered on actual basis up to sum insured.
• Pre and post hospitalisation expenses are also covered on an actual basis for 60 and 180 days respectively.
• Reassure Forever ensures you get unlimited restoration benefits after the first claim.
• All the basic benefits are pretty much well covered under this plan. Now let’s talk about the more interesting or innovative features.

Lock the Clock:

Once you buy the plan and start paying your premiums, your premium gets locked as per your age at entry till the time you make your first claim. This means that the premium you pay every year does not increase based on your age until you make a claim. This is called Lock the Clock feature and is available in Diamond+, Platinum+ and Titanium+ variants and is one of a kind in the market.

Booster+:

Another great feature is Booster+ where your unutilised sum insured gets carried forward to the next policy year, based on your age at entry and plan variant.

• Gold+, it is upto a maximum of 3X.
• Diamond+, maximum of 5X
• Platinum+ and Titanium+, upto a maximum of 10X.

Maternity Benefits:

Then there is an inbuilt maternity benefit called Miracle under the plan. Miracle cover you get every year depends on your base sum insured and the best part is that your unutilised miracle benefit also gets carried forward to the next year up to your Booster+ limit. Miracle benefit not only covers delivery charges but also ante-natal checkups and vaccination for mother, IVF, surrogacy and even charges for adopting a child. New born baby is also covered from Day 1.

Optional Benefits: 

Now there are a few optional benefits available. You can choose and add at the time of purchase by paying extra premium.

Let’s take a look at them.

• Borderless Option: With the borderless option, you can take treatment anywhere in the world for planned as well as emergency hospitalisation with no restriction on where the condition is diagnosed. If you are single and have already taken this policy for yourself, you can add your spouse when you get married and with the Future Ready option, your spouse gets continuity benefits on waiting periods served by you.
• Safeguard+: Safeguard+ option makes sure that cost of consumables are paid by the insurer at the time of claim. And if you find the plan to be a bit expensive, you can also add a deductible to reduce the premium burden.

Premiums

This plan is definitely loaded with features and almost covers everything a young prospective buyer would be looking for. Let’s look at the premium now to see how this plan fares in terms of affordability.

This plan comes with zone-wise premiums and there are totally 4 zones. 

For a person living in Delhi which is in the highest zone, premium for a 30 year old individual for a Rs. 10 Lakh cover including Safeguard+ option comes to around Rs. 14.7K. Though this is not very competitive, this product is fairly priced. We have also not added any other rider or option barring Safeguard+.

About the Insurer

Niva Bupa is one of the largest stand alone health insurance companies in India. Niva Bupa was formerly known as Max Bupa and was founded in the year 2008. However in 2019 and 2020, it underwent a massive change in shareholding pattern and top management. 

Though Niva Bupa has launched revolutionary products in the last couple of years, the company is struggling with its operational metrics. Their claim settlement ratio for the last one year is around 90% which is just ok. There are other health insurance companies which have much better claim settlement ratios. 

Also, their volume of complaints, which is the number of claim complaints per 10000 claims, is on the higher side and shows a rising trend over the last one year.

Should you buy Niva Bupa Aspire?

What’s the conclusion? Should you buy this plan or not?

This plan offers some great features which you would not get otherwise in the market, especially for young people below the age of 40. But the pricing is not very competitive. Also the product is new and the company has not provided clarity on how its various features will work. 

And Niva Bupa fares an average performance based on claim settlement ratio and volume of complaints. 

If you are ok with all this, you can very well go ahead and buy this plan. 

Otherwise you can wait and watch how this plan evolves and performs in the time to come before deciding on making a purchase.