Rapid increase in insurance cover post-COVID
BS P Life Fiji’s market shares have grown significantly due to the rapid intake of health insurance cover over the past three years by individuals, families and businesses.
BSP Life Fiji head of distribution and marketing George Kotobalavu, revealed this at the Fiji Human Resources Institute convention at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa in Nadi on Friday.
“This is in terms of providing more insurance coverage to the local market and what we’re seeing is a lot more understanding of the importance of life insurance and the latest result published by the Reserve Bank of Fiji last year,” he said.
Life insurance Quotations
He also said BSP Life’s life insurance held about 59 per cent of the market share.
“In that essence we continue to advocate to the market to take up health insurance,” Mr Kotobalavu said.
“When you measure the value of life insurance policies for a particular provider like BSP Life from last year’s annual results, we currently ended up at about $83 million, so that’s the value of policies we have in place and in terms of count. “That’s around 40,000 policies, so those policies vary, some of them are group policies and some are individual ones, but the good thing is we continue to see an increase in the uptake.”
Health insurance
He said there was also an increase in the intake of group health insurance cover by companies.
“That’s when BSP Life provides health insurance for the entire workforce for that organisation and what that means is they get access to outpatient care,” he said.
“If they need to be admitted to hospital, its covered under the respective insurance cover and also if they need surgical, whether it’s locally or abroad, it’s also included.
“When you look at the costs of these treatments, it runs into the hundreds of thousands and a lot of us don’t have that sort of money but through health insurance we’re able to access that,” he said.
Mr Kotobalavu said BSP Life Fiji provided quotations for companies to provide the listing for the names, the gender, weight, height and other specifics to do a risk assessment and quotation for premium.
He said BSP Life Fiji was trying to advocate to the market by simplifying its content for the average person to understand what life insurance is and its benefits.