Getting insured for self, family, car, house, medical, personal household belongings or some other has become a priority for every individual in our country. However, making a choice of an insurance company is very important failing which there are lot of issues that one may tend to face in course of time. I bring out a few tips for people who needs a guidance in making a choice for procuring an insurance policy.
1) First of all, one must determine what to insure, one’s life or a vehicle or a house, and then proceed to find a suitable company.
2) Then choosing a company that offers the desired insurance is very important since a company can offer insurance for one category only. For example, companies LIC of India, SBI Life Insurance or Bharati Axa offer life insurance whereas companies like Star Health or Apollo offer health insurance and accordingly, HDFC offers house hold insurance and so on. The proper choice can be made by carefully visiting the websites of different companies and to my view, old companies and mostly government owned companies must be taken as a priority since these companies induce less risk to the customer in all aspects.
3) After choosing the company, a registered agent of it must be called for and consulted.
3) Then one must decide which type of policy he or she wants to procure. To be clear, for a life insurance, whether a traditional or a unit linked(ULIP) si needed and similarly for a vehicle, whether a third party or first party insurance needs to be procured. To my view, in modern conditions, a ULIP is more preferable to traditional policies since a ULIP gets more benefits for the insured.
4) Then a term for the policy and the respective premium amount needs to be negotiated with the agent. In such a case, the customer must take some time and investigate with other similar companies and make a comparison of terms and conditions. These days, it can be comfortably done using Internet and there are websites like bankbazaar.com which offer such aids.
5) Having decided the policy, the customer must read all the provisions as specified in the terms and conditions carefully before signing the agreement.
6) Then the proposal premium must be given to the agent only by cheque and never in cash.
7) After the payment procedure is accomplished, which may take a week or so, the customer must get the hard copy of the policy usually through post.
This is the detailed procedure for procuring an insurance policy and not get cheated for sure.