Anand Shankar Roy, MD and CEO, Star Health said the company has seen a 50 per cent rise in demand for new policies since October last year.
“We believe that this is a permanent structural change and demand will continue to be high,” he told reporters in Chennai.
Roy said the GST rate cuts have also helped in renewals, which has increased to 88 per cent from 86 per cent.
He said customers are also utilising the benefits for higher coverage instead of reducing premiums, with the average new policy sum insured increasing 25 per cent to Rs 11 lakh from Rs 9 lakh.
Roy said the company is confident of reaching a gross written premium of Rs 20,000 crore in financial year 2026 and till January it has reached Rs 17,800 crore.
He said more demand is coming from smaller towns.
Roy said the company last year had taken a price hike in almost 65 per cent of its products and the average increase has been 10-12 per cent.
“India, unfortunately, continues to see very high medical inflation. So, we have a very tightly regulated industry whereas the health care industry seems to be totally unregulated in terms of pricing and all of that,” he said.
“We are very mindful of price increases but given the medical inflation in India we believe that a small price increase annually will be the order of the day,” Roy said.
Star Health also announced the launch of 32 Arogya Seva Kendra’s (ASK) across 9 states under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme.
The ASK health clinics, being implemented in partnership with Piramal Swasthya, part of Piramal Foundation, will provide structured primary care services at Zero Cost to the patients. Pfizer, is enhancing the initiative with its knowledge and expertise in vaccination.
Going forward, through the initiative the company is planning to serve 10 Lakh Beneficiaries across 9 States.
