Maintaining Caution On ModiCare: ICICI Lombard

Bidding for India’s health insurance scheme, dubbed Modicare, may’ve commenced, but ICICI Lombard General Insurance Ltd. prefers to wait and watch.

“We’ll have to see whether the pricing and the bidding that is happening is sustainable for a longer period of time,” said Bhargav Dasgupta, the company’s chief executive officer and managing director, told BloombergQuint on the sidelines of the launch of India’s first ‘Wellness Index’. “We’ll take a call on participating later.”

Based on experience from other schemes in the past, we’ve realised there is a lack of data, understanding and inefficient pricing in the initial period of implementation, Dasgupta told BloombergQuint. “In some such schemes the pricing becomes completely unviable from the insurer’s perspective and when that happens on a sustained basis, the schemes fail.”

The company has so far not taken part in the bidding process for the Prime Minister Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Mission (PMRSSM), dubbed Modicare.