• Quick intro
• The promise
• What was good?
• What could have been better?
• Summing up!

ICICI Lombard is one of the largest private general insurance companies in India. The insurance company provides a well-diversified range of insurance products through its multiple distribution channels, including motor insurance, health insurance, personal accident insurance, crop insurance, fire insurance, marine insurance, and engineering and liability insurance.

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According to their website, their main objective is ‘customer satisfaction’. There are 3 things they promise to offer to the customers - 

• Proper explanation of products and processes from policy issuance to claims.
• Assured assistance in times of trouble.
• Guidance from highly trained professionals and experts at the time of claim.

To find out if the insurance company is true to its promises, our research team went through a health insurance customer’s actual journey through a mystery shopping audit. How was the experience? What were the learnings? 

Let’s find out - in this Beshak Test Drive: A Review of ICICI Lombard.
 

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Placement of products 👍

The products are arranged in a systematic, easy-to-find manner on the ICICI Lombard website. Initially, no OTP verification is required - you just need to enter your phone number, email address, and some basic details. After which, you’ll get the details of various health products available with the insurer along with their quotes, right on your screen. Later, in case you want to learn more about a plan, an OTP verification will be needed.

Policy wordings & brochure👍

The policy wordings and brochures of several health insurance policies sold by ICICI Lombard are available at the same place where other details of the plan are mentioned. Neither is there a separate download section, nor will you be redirected to another website - they are readily available, which saved us a lot of time as well as the hassle of searching for them elsewhere. 

Quality of advice 👍

The advisor explained all the processes and product details properly to us. They, however, were explaining everything in a hurry, and it seemed as if they wanted to close the deal quickly. At times, when the advisor was explaining about the product, the call got disconnected too. But they made sure to call back immediately and apologise for the same.

Proposal form 👍

The proposal form on the website was very simple, not too lengthy. There is also an option of saving the proposal form and continuing later. Some portals and aggregators ask customers to fill a part of the proposal form before making the payment and the other part is to be filled out after the payment is completed. However, this is not the case with ICICI Lombard Health Insurance, we weren’t required to fill a separate form after the payment was done.  

Payment 👍

The advisor helped us throughout the purchase and payment process. Online registration is required for making the payment on the ICICI Lombard website. Our experience with them was smooth - the payment got completed without any hassles. Also, there are two premium payment options available with the insurance company, you can either pay your premiums annually or via EMI. 

Quick policy issuance 👍

While the soft copy of the policy got delivered within minutes - right after the payment was completed, the advisor said that they will send the hard copy in 14 days. We, however, received the hard copy within 6 days of making the payment.

Post-purchase support 👍

After the policy was issued, the advisor checked the policy document and cross-verified it with us to ensure there were no errors. After completion of the payment, we asked some questions about the policy, and all questions were patiently answered by the advisor. 24X7 support is available too, in case you need urgent or immediate help. 

Change Request 👍

There are two types of endorsement - financial and non-financial. Non-financial endorsement includes making changes in the name, address, email, phone number, etc. whereas a financial endorsement includes increasing the sum insured, changing the policy duration, opting for riders, etc. 

ICICI Lombard allows customers to do a non-financial endorsement at any time during the policy duration. A financial endorsement, however, can only be done at the time of renewal, not in the middle of the policy term. There’s a self-help section on ICICI Lombard’s website for making changes to the policy. We tried to change our email address through this self-help section. 

When we clicked on the ‘email correction’ option, we were asked to fill in policy details. Once we filled in the required details, the only options available to make changes were - date of birth, mobile number, and cheque number. There was no option to change the email address. So, we dropped a mail to the insurer regarding the same. The company said they would correct the email address within 5 working days. We received the endorsement copy with the changed email address one day after the endorsement request was raised. 

Cancellation and refund 👍

Our cancellation and refund experience at ICICI Lombard was very smooth. The advisor explained the entire cancellation procedure to us in detail. They told us the entire amount would be refunded if the cancellation is done during the free look period. If the policy is cancelled after the free look period, certain cancellation charges would be levied. 

We cancelled the policy during the free look period and hence, the full amount was refunded. The advisor told us we would receive the refund in 7 working days. However, the refund was processed within 4 days of raising the request.

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E-insurance account 👎

An EIA or e-insurance account allows you to hold, track and monitor your insurance policies digitally under one umbrella. You can access your e-insurance account at any time from anywhere and for anything. If you want to modify or update any detail in your policy - you can do that too.

Now, when we asked about the e-insurance account, the advisor didn’t seem to have much knowledge about it and straightaway told us that we didn’t require an e-insurance account. In our opinion, it would have been much better if the advisor had asked a senior official or someone who had thorough knowledge about the EIA and then explained the same to us, instead of telling us we didn’t need an e-insurance account.

Unsolicited calls 👎

Spamming and chasing are some of the major issues in the insurance industry. In our test drive of purchasing an ICICI Lombard health insurance policy, we received two unsolicited calls asking to purchase a policy from them, and the calls were received after the payment was done. We also received a few messages related to premiums from the insurance company on WhatsApp. 

Free look period details 👎

After you purchase an insurance policy, you get a free look period, i.e., a period during which the policy can be reviewed - and if you’re not satisfied and want to opt out of the policy, you can return it without any penalties or cancellation charges. The ICICI Lombard representative told us that the policy offers a 14-day free look period. However, the policy wordings mentioned a free look period of 15 days.

Claims process explanation 👎

Both cashless and reimbursement claim processes were explained in detail to us. The advisor also informed us that in case of a reimbursement claim, we could either courier the documents to the branch office or scan the documents and upload them to the ILtakecare app. Further, they also talked about several documents that would be needed at the time of claim. 

But the advisor didn’t properly explain the list of documents that will be needed during a reimbursement claim. Generally, we need to submit the discharge summary, medical bills, documents, cancelled cheque, etc. at the time of a reimbursement claim. The advisor, however, told us that only bills need to be submitted and we reconfirmed this a couple of times. 

This obviously wasn’t much of an issue for us, because we didn’t go through the claims process at all. But it might be for you. Make sure you go through your policy documents as well as get a list of all the documents that will be needed at the time of claim from - so you don’t have to go through hassles in case a claim arises in the future.

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Overall, we experienced some excellent aspects like - 

• A detailed explanation of the products
• Timely follow-up
• Proper help during purchase and payment
• 24X7 post-purchase support

Two major issues we faced were - 

• Receiving unsolicited calls and messages even after the policy was purchased, 
• Advisors failing to resolve certain queries because of incomplete knowledge about various important aspects such as e-insurance accounts and documents needed at the time of claim. 

ICICI Lombard can truly make the user’s insurance journey satisfactory with careful consideration of the said limitations.

If you liked this Beshak Test Drive: Review of ICICI Lombard, do let us know in the comments below. 

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