Risk is something we just cannot avoid in life. You can be extremely careful, but that doesn't mean you won't fall sick or need hospitalisation. That is exactly why people buy insurance products ? both life and non-life ? that offer cover for multiple risks such as life, hospitalisation , personal accident, public liability and so on. However, the real challenge is keeping track of these policies and renewing them year after year on time. This issue leads to two possible scenarios: one, most people do not buy insurance cover ; two, even if they buy, many fail to renew it on time.

To address this issue non-life insurance companies have come out with the concept of 'bundling' . The known form of bundle is the 'family floater' health insurance policy. For the uninitiated, one can buy a health insurance policy for an individual to pay for the actual expenses incurred due to hospitalisation in future, subject to the limits set by the insurer. This is termed as an individual health insurance policy. A family floater health insurance plan lets you share the entire sum insured among the family members covered under the health insurance policy, without any individual upper limits.

"The buyer gets to cover the entire family in one policy at a discounted price and further he can easily keep track of it," says TA Ramalingam, head underwriting , Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company. Let's take an example. Consider a family of three ? husband (30), wife (25) and daughter (2). While the premium for a Rs 2-lakh family floater policy will be Rs 6,337, the premium for three individual health insurance policies, will come to Rs 8,779. Under the family floater, the cover is capped at Rs 2 lakh for all the family members whereas individual health insurance will ensure that each family member gets a cover of Rs 2 lakh.

The second type of bundling comes in the form of 'insurance packages' . Such covers are available on both individual and group plat-forms . You can approach the insurer to buy one or you can buy it through the bancassurance channel where the banks sell such packages for their customers. The packages typically comprise three to eight different insurance covers. These include hospital cash, health insurance, critical illness, personal accident , education assistance, householder items insurance, personal liability and baggage loss. The buyer can pick and choose the covers he needs.

For example, a salesperson, who is just starting his career and happens to be a frequent traveller, would like to buy covers for health, hospital cash, personal accident and baggage loss. In case of middle-aged salesperson with afamily to support, the list will be further enhanced with covers for householder items and education assistance to his children. The biggest benefit of such a policy is that you can buy multiple covers under one policy. You have to fill up one form and write out one cheque. Every time you need to renew it, you just have to write one cheque and not a battery of cheques on various dates.

Source : ET Bureau