Renewability feature makes sure that a policyholder can renew his policy even if he has made a previous claim. So, does every medical card in the market have this feature?
The answer is no. I know that there is at least one insurance company which offers a medical card without this feature. I don't want to criticize and mention the name of the insurance company here as this is not my purpose of creating this blog.
As we all know, our health deteriorates as we get older. At the age of 60 or more, we face a lot of health problems and we need our medical card the most during this period. If we can't renew our medical card as we have made several claims previously, we have to bear ourselves the mounting medical costs as we have no more protection from the insurance companies. We may say that we can buy a new medical card from other insurance companies. However, they may not accept our application because our risk is already very high.
So, does AIA Berhad offer medical card with renewability feature? The answer is absolutely yes. According to Mr Khor Hock Seng, the CEO of AIA Berhad, the plan (ExcelCare Plus) comes with a renewability feature where the policy will not be cancelled even if a previous claim has been made. The plan will provide continuous protection so long as it is within the benefit entitlement and annual and lifetime limits of the plan. This feature may prove useful when at older ages certain illnesses have a higher tendency of recurrence.
According to the brochure and policy contract of the medical card offered by AIA Berhad, the plan is renewable at the option of a policyholder until the occurrence of any of the following:
- non payment of premium or premium not made on time.
- fraud or misrepresentation of material fact during application.
- this policy is cancelled at the request of the policyholder.
- total claims of this policy have reached the lifetime limit specified.
- on the death of the insured (hence terminating coverage for dependants too).
- the insured ceases to qualify as a dependant.
- the insured attains the coverage age limit specified.
- termination of coverage for all policies in a certain market and the company withdraws this policy completely from the market in accordance with the Portfolio Withdrawal Condition.
- termination of a plan to which ExcelCare Plus rider is attached (if applicable).
If all the situations above don't happen, a policyholder can renew his coverage easily. In sum, it is very important to make sure that our medical card is renewable every year so that we still get the protection we need the most at older ages.
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Without reading this post, I will never know about renewability feature. Useful info ! Good job !
ReplyDeleteThanks !
ReplyDeletevery good info here i will never know the feature if i din visit ur blog
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting my blog !
ReplyDeleteyou lied, my agent made me signed an agreement that says the medical card can be terminated/not renewed if the company chooses not to renew.
ReplyDeleteChecklist on disclosure and transparency of Medical and health insurance.
and i'm sure AIA is not as good as you said, because no one else buy AIA, and i suffer from buying from an old lady and i found that, for a 27 years old buying 200k whole life non-part policy for RM2000 per month is bullshit. lets hope AIA will failed and because i'm so freaking disappointed with AIA, i decided to join prudential.
you can tell me what you think at twh2000my@yahoo.com
but, it is true that your blog is informative. time to go to GE or prudential, i think a good product is more important than a good salesman. after the salesman died, the only thing you have is the damn product he sold you. and i truely hate my insurance agent.
I don’t lie. Here is the proof (http://aia.com.my/downloads/news21112007_NewMedPlanAIA.pdf).
ReplyDeleteSo, why do you need to sign an agreement with the clause you mentioned? Some of the policyholders assume that they can renew their medical cards even they don’t pay premium because the medical card has renewability feature (guaranteed). Some of them also assumes that they can renew even they have provided dishonest information about their state of health during application. So, in order to avoid these problems, medical card offered by AIA can be renewed at the option of a policyholder until the occurrence of any of the 9 situations mentioned in the post above. I think the conditions are reasonable. In other words, AIA can no longer use the word ‘guaranteed’ to protect its interests.
AIA is giving out more than RM 30 million every month to its policyholders as insurance claims. If no consumer wants to buy insurance from AIA like what you said, then AIA must be a very generous organization as it keeps donating more than RM 30 million to the public every month.
If you are 27 years old and buy a whole life insurance with a sum assured of RM 200,000 from AIA, it is absolutely impossible that you need to pay a monthly premium of RM 2,000. Please check your policy carefully.
I think you don’t understand one thing. All insurance companies in Malaysia are controlled closely by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM). In other words, all the insurance products must be approved by BNM before they are launched to the market. In your case, the main problem arises because of the AIA agent, not the company. There must be some good insurance agents and bad ones at the same time. It is the same to AIA, Great Eastern, ING, Prudential and others.
My family had a bad experience before with Great Eastern. We wanted to buy an endowment plan and the agent recommended us a whole life plan. When we asked other insurance agent to review the policy after several years, we found that we did not buy what we wanted. So, we went and asked the agent again about the product. The agent kept telling us that the product was an endowment plan, not whole life plan. So, can you see the problem here? Many problems arise because of agents who are not professional enough. Some of them don’t even know what they are selling to the public. But, I never say that Great Eastern is a very bad company because it was the agent who created problems to us. So, please be fair to AIA also. For your information, we lost more than RM 20,000 after we surrendered the plan.
I have a friend who is also an AIA agent. He has customers who are also insurance agents from Prudential. So, if the products offered by AIA are not really good like what you said, what is the reason they bought from AIA? For your information, they bought from AIA because there were some benefits that Prudential didn’t have. So, can you say that Prudential offers the best insurance products in Malaysia? What I can say is that Prudential offers one of the best, not the best, insurance products in Malaysia.
You can hate your AIA insurance agent very much. But, please don’t hate AIA because you can’t make a good comparison between the products offered by Prudential and AIA. It is just like when you hate person A very much, you can’t see or discover his strengths or kindness because you keep focusing on his weaknesses. There is no perfect human being in the world. It is the same to insurance companies and products.
Well, my company do take AIA before, then change to ING. I wonder why is that happens?
ReplyDeleteYou state that AIA insurance is renewable if "it is within the benefit entitlement and annual and lifetime limits of the plan". I believe ALMOST all insurance company provided this feature if "it is within the benefit entitlement and annual and lifetime limits of the plan".
There are many reasons why it happened. Your company may not be happy with the services the AIA agent provided.
ReplyDeleteIf the renewability feature can be found on most of the medical cards in the market, I will not mention about it as it is nothing special. I mention about it because some of the medical cards offered by big insurers in the market don't have this feature.
For some medical cards, a policyholder can't renew them any more after he has made several claims before even though he has not "enjoyed" all his benefits.
Insurance products offer by different companies are generally the same except there are some pros and cons. Other reason why some agencies bought insurance from other companies is to diversified and minimise the risk. I know a few of friends of mine bought insurance from other companies so that in the event an insurance company goes bankrupt, they will still cover by another one
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Insurance Act 1996, all financial institutions including insurance companies that are bankrupt will be taken over by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to make sure that the benefits of all policyholders in Malaysia are not affected. Insurance companies have to keep a lot of money in BNM in order to do insurance business.
ReplyDeleteprudential's medical card is guaranteed renewal
ReplyDeleteu can use up until the lifetime limit finish
u cannot simply say that ur only one company AIA has the renewability feature
ReplyDeleteRomika: Can you highlight for me which of my statements mentions that AIA is the only insurance company that offers medical card with renewability feature?
ReplyDeleteGreat Blog!
ReplyDeleteRomika: Please read first before you make any comment. We all are adults. Think first before saying something out. I don't simply criticize other people and companies. So, I hope the same thing from other people.
ReplyDeleteLoke,
ReplyDeletePls refer to
8.termination of coverage for all policies in a certain market and the company withdraws this policy completely from the market in accordance with the Portfolio Withdrawal Condition.
Pls bear in mind with this clause, u also can't renew the policy in one day in future (when u are old)if the insurance company decided to stop sell this product.