COVID-19 impact? Health insurers beat industry in FY20 premium growth

Standalone health insurers saw a 27 percent YoY growth while the general insurance industry ended FY20 with a gross direct premium growth of 11.7 percent.

Moneycontrol News

April 15, 2020 / 01:57 PM IST

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The general insurance industry ended FY20 with a gross direct premium year-on-year (YoY) growth of 11.7 percent. Data from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) showed that the non-life insurers collected premiums of Rs 1.89 lakh crore.

Among the different categories, standalone health insurers saw a 27 percent YoY growth with gross direct premium of Rs 14,409.98 crore in FY20. This could be a reflection of the uptake in purchase of health insurance products amidst the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Health

Source: IRDAINote: Reliance Health is now merged with Reliance General

The other non-life insurers (excluding specialist insurers) saw a 9.5 percent YoY growth in gross premiums. Here, New India Assurance was the largest company in the sector with premium of Rs 26,699.37 crore, growing YoY by 11.7 percent.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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