Rise of Customisable Health Insurance Plans: Why Health Cover Is Becoming More Personal
Bhubaneswar: Health insurance has become an essential pillar of financial security in India, enabling individuals and families to manage rising medical costs while protecting long-term savings. As awareness around healthcare planning and financial protection grows, insurance is increasingly seen not as a discretionary expense but as a necessary safeguard against unexpected medical emergencies.
At the same time, the health insurance landscape is evolving. The industry is gradually moving away from rigid, standardised offerings towards solutions that better reflect individual circumstances. With healthcare needs becoming more varied, customers are seeking customisable health insurance plans that can be tailored to their age, lifestyle, family structure, and specific health priorities.
This evolution is being driven by several factors, including rising medical inflation, longer life expectancy, greater incidence of lifestyle-related conditions, and an increased focus on preventive healthcare. Government initiatives aimed at improving insurance penetration have further reinforced the importance of adequate and relevant health cover as a part of long-term financial planning.
Customisable health plans allow individuals to pay for what truly matters to them, rather than being locked into features they may never use. As a result, flexibility is no longer a value-add; it is fast becoming an expectation.
Top 5 Ways Customisable Health Insurance Is Being Used
- Aligning Coverage with Life Stages
Healthcare needs evolve with age, life stage, and changing lifestyles. Younger individuals may prioritise affordability and accident-related cover, families often seek maternity and child healthcare benefits, while older adults may require enhanced protection for chronic conditions. Customisable plans allow coverage to adapt in line with these changing requirements.
- Managing Healthcare Costs More Effectively
By selecting relevant add-ons and opting out of unnecessary features, policyholders can balance coverage and premiums more efficiently. This makes health insurance more accessible while still offering meaningful protection.
- Addressing Lifestyle and Preventive Healthcare Needs
With lifestyle-related health concerns becoming more common, customers are increasingly opting for features such as regular health check-ups, wellness benefits, and coverage for long-term conditions, areas that traditional plans may not adequately address.
- Greater Clarity at the Time of Claims
Customisation brings transparency. When customers clearly understand what they are covered for, it helps reduce confusion and stress during hospitalisation or claims, improving overall trust in the insurance process.
- Keeping Coverage Relevant Over Time
As individuals change jobs, relocate, or experience shifts in family structure, insurance needs also evolve. Customisable health insurance plans make it easier to review and update coverage periodically, without the need to start afresh, ensuring continued relevance over time.
Reflecting this growing preference for flexibility, SBI General Insurance recently introduced SBIG Health Alpha, a health insurance solution designed to adapt to customers’ evolving healthcare needs. The product enables policyholders to personalise their coverage through a range of optional benefits, allowing them to build a plan that suits their current priorities while offering the flexibility to adjust it over time.
Health Alpha also responds to emerging healthcare trends by going beyond traditional hospitalisation cover, offering enhanced cumulative bonuses, flexible sum insured options, wellness-linked benefits, and specialised covers that resonate with today’s active lifestyles. Introduced in the post-GST environment as one of the industry’s first fully customisable health plans with over 50 coverage options, it includes unique features such as gym and sports injury cover that provide OPD benefits for fitness-related injuries, alongside its modular design that reinforces the idea that health insurance should evolve with the customer rather than remain a static, one-time purchase.
At SBI General Insurance, the emphasis is on giving customers greater choice and ensuring that health insurance evolves with their needs across different life stages, rather than remaining a fixed, one-time purchase. As India continues to strengthen its healthcare ecosystem, customisable health insurance is emerging as a natural progression, one that places customers at the centre of coverage decisions while supporting long-term health security and financial resilience.
