Pricing for a doctor’s professional indemnity
A professional indemnity insurance policy covers doctors against third-party liabilities. A lawsuit filed in case of wrongful treatment or negligence can be expensive.
The premium charged depends on many factors including the coverage and likelihood of the claim. Moreover, every insurance company follows its own pricing policy. The premium varies even if the coverage benefits are the same.
Additional Read: What is the right price to pay for DPI cover?
However, one can negotiate the premium rate on the following –
Sum insured
The premium is directly dependent on the sum insured. A suitable sum insured helps in negotiating the premium. However, we caution you from keeping the sum insured too low. So, doctors with surgical practices should have at least Rs 1 crore of cover. Non-surgical specialties can have lower.
Coverage benefits
You could remove some of the unnecessary covers and extensions. For example, if your patients are based in India then an international cover is unnecessary. This will reduce the premium.
Deductibles (also called excess)
The deductible is the amount that you must pay yourself before the insurance kicks in. So, a higher deductible means that you will have more out-of-pocket expenses but also that the premium will be lower. So, ideally, you want to set deductibles for small costs that are paid by you and only the larger expenses by the insurer. For an individual practitioner, a deductible of about Rs 15,000 should be okay. For larger hospitals, the deductible could be as high as Rs 1 lakh.
AoA:AoY ratio
This stands for Any one Accident: Anyone Year. Ideally, this should be set to 1:1 so that you can claim 100% of your sum assured in one claim. However, if you want to reduce cost, then consider a ratio of 1:2 which means that you cannot claim more than 50% of the sum assured in any one claim. Clearly, a higher AoA:AoY ratio reduces premiums.
Buying through SecureNow
SecureNow is a marketplace that allows you to compare premium quotes of different insurance companies. We will help you negotiate and find the best professional indemnity insurance policy. SecureNow will also help you understand the coverage’s nuances.
