The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) recently announced a policy update, saying health insurance companies must offer products catering to all age groups. This move was misinterpreted as the regulator removing the age cap for buying health insurance.

Media reports kept circulating and social media was abuzz with claims that Irdai had removed the age bar and allowed people above 65 to buy health insurance. However, that’s misleading and not true.

Earlier, there was a maximum-entry-age limit of 65 years and insurers were required to design all health insurance plans to be accessible for individuals up to 65 years of age.

Even before the recent changes, individuals who purchased health insurance policies before reaching the age of 65 and renewed them annually found that their policies remained valid even after crossing the age of 65. Therefore, there was no restriction as such preventing individuals above the age of 65 from having health insurance coverage.

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As per the latest policy update, effective from April 1, Irdai has omitted a key clause that previously required insurers to offer health coverage to policyholders until the age of 65 years. It’s important to note that this clause was not a regulatory cap.

This age limit has now been removed, with effect from 1st April 2024.

In a series of posts on social media platform ‘X’, Mahavir Chopra, the founder of insurance platform Beshak.org, simplified the Irdai notification and explained what it exactly means.

“This deletion DOES NOT MEAN IRDAI has removed the cap, and that now older citizens can get health insurance,” Chopra’s post said.

“It means insurers can now have ANY minimum maximum-entry-age limit in their products.”

In fact, this means policies can now have entry restrictions of 50 years, 60 years, even 20 years; and this has been left to the insurer, he explains.

Chopra also talked about the positive and negative sides of this Irdai policy update.

Positives:

This will give insurers additional flexibility to design innovative products for younger customers to enter into.

Hopefully, this will attract younger folks to buy health insurance.

Negatives:

Insurers can now restrict older age folks from comprehensive policies they design.

Note, earlier too, through their underwriting guidelines insurers could have restricted a 60-year-old, or a 20-year-old to get a policy. They only had the right to “apply”.

Here’s is a message for existing customers.

Existing customers above or below 65 years, don’t need to worry. Your policy has lifetime renewable guarantee. So, you won’t be dropped, said Chopra.

As changes are implemented this regulation will impact NEW customers looking for a new policy or porting, his one of the posts said.