Hi Ankit,

First of all congratulations for thinking about insurance for your family. It is a responsible thing to do. Now let me answer your queries in the order they were asked:

1. Since you used the word 'economical', and that you are considering HDFC Ergo and Max Bupa, I would like to suggest that you should look at Max Bupa Health Companion. The product is about 25-30% cheaper than ReAssure and about 5-7% cheaper than Optima Restore over a holding period of 20-30 yrs. Both Optima Restore and Health companion are similar products with similar features. ReAssure is a premium product with certain additional frills. It also happens to be the most feature-rich product out there in Indian market. With my claims experience, I don't think optima restore or health companion leave anything for wanting. Decent value-for-money products.
2. All the 3 products discussed in previous point are hybrid products, i.e. they can switch between family floater and individual plan seamlessly. Buy a family floater with your dad as Primary policyholder and rest 3 family members as dependents. Once you and your brother reach the max age for dependent child, you would be pushed out of the floater. So you continue in the same product but as an individual. When you brothers get married, you can add your spouse and children to your individual policies and shift from individual to floater back again. Finally the policy that you buy today will eventually have your father and mother as members once the children exit from their policies.
3. Don't go by what those idiots tell you. If you are looking to buy online, buy directly from HDFC Ergo or Max Bupa website to get 5% or more discount on online payment of premium. Policybazaar won't add any further value. Agent will go missing at the time of claim. About the loading, that all depends on underwriting when you submit proposal. Nobody has control on that and I wouldn't hazard a guess whether any loading would apply.
4. Given the age of your parents, 10 lakhs family floater is a good starting point. When you brothers get pushed out from floater due to dependent age limit, shift your personal individual policy to 5 lakh SI while the parent's policy continues as 10 lakh cover. Remember that all products discussed above have 100% NCB accumulation, meaning that the total cover will double over a period of time.
5. The rider you are talking about is Safeguard, available with ReAssure. I always recommend that if someone has made up their mind to buy ReAssure (that means they can afford a premium product and cost is not their consideration), then the real advantage of ReAssure comes by having the Safeguard add-on with it.
6. I am unclear about the advantage of a monthly premium. But what I can say from my claim experience is that if it's going to be a monthly payment, you would setup an ECS mandate (direct payment from account or card). There are times when these transactions fail. Insurer says that's a banking problem. Nevertheless, when such 'accidents' in transactions happen, you are left without a cover. Most customers fail to notice when payment fails. Worst scenario, they're not able to claim. Since I have seen 5+ such occurrences in my short career, I think there are many more customers facing this challenge. Monthly payment creates many more opportunities for such transaction failures leading to endpoint misery. So if you can afford one-shot payment, ALWAYS go for it.

Happy to answer any follow-up questions.

Anuj Jindal

Co-founder

SureClaim

Hey Ankit,

Here is what I think

1) There is no best company or plan. All have some issues hence what you are comfortable. On the two plans that you have selected althogh they are very similar there are few differences - In HDFC Optima Restore there is no cap or sub-limit on any disease. While incase of Re-Assure there is a limit of Rs 1Lac specified for some Robotic Surgeries. Optima Restore does not cover Healthcare-at-Home while in case of Re-Assure Healthcare-at-Home for Chemo & Dialysis is covered. Optima Restore does not cover AYUSH (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha & Homeopathy) while Re-Assure shall cover it.

2) Prefer taking two seprate policies - i) Parents + Brother ii) Yourself. While you have the option to take a floater policy incase of Re-Assure the policy wording specifies age limit as 30yrs for a Dependent Child. Only if you are dependent on your parents should you consider this. Another advantage I see for taking two seprate policies is in terms of Tax Saving under Sec 80D of I-T Act. Both you & your father will be able to get tax benefit of upto Rs 25000/- seprately.

3) I will skip this question since I sell insurance and I therefore I will have my bias.

4) 10 Lac cover for a tier III city seems fine. Hower since ailments don't know which city do you reside in hence look at buying you super-top of 15-20 Lacs. Buy it from the same company that you are buying your base plan.

5) I would not buy the rider only if it was offereing me cost of consumable. The highlight of the rider is inflation protection which is as per CPI - so at time of renewal suppose CPI was 5.5% an additional 5.5% gets added to the sum insured. There is another benefit that rider offer i.e. incase of claim of upto Rs 50K the cumulative bonus or no-claim bonus will not be reduced.

6) Prefer upfront payment instead of EMI.

Two more things

a) Since your father has history of hypertension please be prepared for loading or an extra premium over and above the premium that you are aware off.

b) Please evaluate taking a 10 Lacs cover for each member i.e. father, mother & brother under a single policy. Since there is significant age gap I think the individual premium might work cheaper.

I hope the response will help you taking an informed decesion. Please do give a thumbs-up to the responses you receive.