“Portability” is a facility provided to a health insurance policyholder, which allows policy holder to choose a better service provider by transferring the credit gained for pre-existing conditions and time bound exclusions, from one insurer to another or from one plan to another plan of the same insurance company. Only similar health policies can be ported, under portability.
All health insurance policies issued by General and Health Insurers shall allow the portability of any policy. Portability is allowed for all individual health insurance policies issued by General Insurers and Health Insurers including family floater policies. Individual members, including the family members covered under any group health insurance policy of a General Insurer or Health Insurer shall have the right to migrate from such a group policy to an individual health insurance policy or a family floater policy with the same insurer. Further the new insurer can levy the terms and conditions and premiums for the chosen product as applicable.
A policyholder desirous of porting his/her policy to another insurance company shall apply to such insurance company to port the entire policy along with all the members of the family, if any, at least 45 days before, but not earlier than 60 days from the premium renewal date of his/her existing policy. Portability is subject to the timelines provided above otherwise insurer may not be liable to port the policy.
The policyholder needs to submit a portability form along with proposal form to the insurance company. On receipt of the Portability Form, the insurance company shall seek the necessary details of medical history and claim history of the concerned policyholder from the existing insurance company.
The existing insurer, on receiving such a request on portability shall furnish the requisite data for porting insurance policies in the prescribed format in the web portal of IRDAI within 7 working days of the receipt of the request. On receipt of such data the new insurer may underwrite the proposal and convey the decision within 15 days to policyholder. No additional charges shall be levied exclusively for porting and no commission is payable by the insurer to any intermediary in such cases.