Health consciousness driven by the pandemic led to sales growth for health insurance of 9% in the first nine months of the year at Muang Thai Life Assurance (MTL), says its president Sara Lamsam.
According to the Thai Life Assurance Association (TLAA), in the first nine months this year, the insurance industry's premiums from health and critical illness (CI) riders was 64.7 billion baht, growth of 7%.
MTL has a market share of 9.61% of the Thai insurance industry's first-year premiums from health and CI worth 6.64 billion baht, up 9%.
Mr Sara said the company's growth of health protection premiums have exceeded the industry average.
According to the Office of the Insurance Commission, its direct premiums from health protection during the first nine months grew by 6%.
"We have spent the past 3-4 years building our health protection business by launching many new products such as elite health insurance, with coverage up to 99 years of age to serve the ageing society," he said.
MTL recently launched a new health protection product (D-Health) with a new claims procedure for hospital room rates for inpatient care.
The service fully covers a "single standard room" regardless of the price and abolishes the previous practice that allows most insurers to limit the room rate per night for each protection programme.
The company also partnered with Bangkok Dusit Medical Services and Pfizer to provide "MTL Health Buddy" service, providing medical consultancy, a second opinion, and targeted therapy. One example is therapy for breast cancer.
The service is set to kick off in January next year.
Mr Sara said health protection is a future trend.
Providing an insurance claim is a basic requirement for competing in the industry industry, but if the company wants to be the leader, it has to go beyond the basics, he said.
Competition in health and CI rider protection has intensified over the past 3-4 years, said Mr Sara.