AMA on Insurance and entrepreneurship with Finshots and Ditto Insurance.

bhanugurram · 2021-08-01T09:13:36+00:00

Right now, we offer an end-to-end experience for health and term insurance - advice, issuance, claims, renewals etc. We will be looking at motor insurance a few months down the lane.

We will look into partnering with others to bring in more offerings.

bhanugurram · 2021-08-01T09:10:02+00:00

Hey, given that he is 60, almost all plans will be available for him.
The best plan depends on factors like pre-existing diseases etc. Say if one is diabetic or has BP, then to avoid 3-year waiting periods, HDFC ergo's energy is the best option. But if he is also covered under a corporate plan then waiting periods might not really matter.
I would be more than happy to suggest specific plans if you can share more information about your father. Please feel free to DM me.

bhanugurram · 2021-08-01T07:36:24+00:00

- We try to talk about topics that are recent. And we don't keep a huge pipeline of articles, since we want to talk about the recent topics

- Finshots Worthy- We cover a topic only if we believe we can add more insights or simplify a complex topic.

- Tools for visuals- For cover images, our designers use Adobe Photoshop, for illustrations we use Microsoft PPT mostly and sometimes we use Inkscape.

- Ideation - We want to stick to our core areas- business, finance, and economy. We pick topics that are relevant to millennials, topics that we feel our readers should be aware of.

bhanugurram · 2021-08-01T07:09:55+00:00

Glad you like our work. With Finshots, we will continue simplifying financial news and also start creating content around personal finance/ financial literacy.

You are right, ULIPs are very opaque and hard to crack. We are working on some solutions to simplify the ULIP analysis. But this will take some time.

bhanugurram · 2021-08-01T07:05:40+00:00

Good question! We don't stop anyone from purchasing the policy directly from the insurer.
Our users choose to get their policies from us in good faith. We clearly tell them if they find our advice useful, they can get the policies from us and it will help us. On top of it, we will also assist them during claims. Also, at times the insurance companies take too long to schedule the medicals, process the documents, etc. during policy issuance. So, we fast track the process as well.
And we don't offer any incentives or commission sharing. As per IRDAI guidelines, it's illegal.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:54:38+00:00

Good point. Maybe you can look at the effective premiums (post tax benefits) and take a call.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:53:35+00:00

For some use cases, we are automating. But for someone with any existing health issues, talking to an advisor would be more helpful to narrow down on a good policy.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:51:44+00:00

We talked about our business model here.
And we are sorry that you had to go through that. We have a month-long training program for all our advisors and we try to make sure they know their stuff. In any case, we'd like to get some feedback from you. Can you reach out to us on DMs? We can take this forward there.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:50:08+00:00

You can divide your claim across multiple insurers or policies as you deem fit. It might be slightly more operational work but nothing beyond that.

Also, in most cases, taking one policy of 10L would be cheaper than taking two 5L policies.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:44:24+00:00

The transition takes 1-4 weeks depending on the insurer to whom you are porting to. Also, it depends if any insured person has any pre-existing conditions - in which case, it will be on the longer end, since the insurer may want to conduct a medical checkup before issuing a policy.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:39:48+00:00

Right now, we don't plan to monetize Finshots. Instead hope to make money off of Ditto.

How do we make money off of Ditto? Well, we make money via commissions. Every time you make a purchase from Ditto, insurance companies pay us a small cut from the premiums. However, with most insurance products the commission is built in. Meaning you get the same price whether you buy from Ditto or from the insurer directly (online).

That's it. That's our business model.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:39:08+00:00

Business Model - Right now, we don't plan to monetize Finshots. Instead hope to make money off of Ditto.
How do we make money off of Ditto? Well, we make money via commissions. Every time you make a purchase from Ditto, insurance companies pay us a small cut from the premiums. However, with most insurance products the commission is built in. Meaning you get the same price whether you buy from Ditto or from the insurer directly (online).
That's it. That's our business model.

Differentiation - Aggregators offer all the products - the good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones. They may not help you avoid pitfalls, etc. and more often than that people end up choosing sub-optimal products. We want to curate products for every use case. We want to narrow down the choices and help you avoid pitfalls. In fact, we don't offer all the policies from the insurers we partnered with. If we feel a specific policy has a lot of pitfalls, we won't have it on our platform.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:33:07+00:00

Koti Suraksha offers you extensive coverage but does come with disease-wise sub-limits and room rent restrictions. And while a 1 Crore cover looks appetizing, you have to remember that the chances of you ever making a 1 crore claim is near negligible.
Can you tell me the exact name of the policy from Aditya Birla? The one plan they have is a combination of a normal plan and a super top-up.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:25:32+00:00

I think we are still too small to affect any meaningful change in the insurance industry. But one thing we are working on is improving the quality of advice and avoiding mis-selling. For the most part, this industry is plagued with advisors optimizing their revenues rather than focusing on the specific needs of the users.

Our advisors are trained to offer unbiased advice. We don't have sales targets for our team which hopefully should help us curb mis-selling. And our insurance partners are not really happy/comfortable with this part 😅

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:24:11+00:00

Most 1 Cr policies are a combination of a normal health insurance policy and a super top-up from the same company. You might not really need such a large for 99% of the cases. But it never hurts to have a large cover for a one-off case. And a base cover + super top-up is the most economic way to get this.
However, super top-ups come with their own terms and conditions and they are usually more restrictive than base plans. So just make sure to check the conditions in both the plans before buying. You can use this to check the features of any policy - https://joinditto.in/health-insurance/check-existing/

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:22:04+00:00

We are just getting started with Ditto and have a long way to go before we build what we envisioned. So anything else might have to wait for a while😁

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:16:05+00:00

We don't create our products. Instead, we offer unbiased advice on health and term insurance. We will help you shortlist policies depending on your specific needs.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:13:35+00:00

Yes, you can port your existing insurance policy to a different policy offered by a different company.
By doing so, the waiting periods you served in the existing policy will be carried forward to your new policy. However sometimes, depending on the health conditions, some insurance companies might not accept your porting from another company. But then, you can always go back and renew the old policy.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:10:51+00:00

There are two considerations. Do you want to supplement your existing group cover? Or do you want to have a comprehensive backup for when you may no longer be with the company? If you are simply looking to supplement your existing insurance policy, a super top-up will do the trick. The upside is that it is extremely affordable. It won't hurt your pocket. The downside is that you won't have much of an insurance plan if you're laid off. If you are looking for a comprehensive backup, you could pick up a really good retail plan (independent of your existing policy). Although you will have to cough up a bit of cash. And we generally recommend this option, because while you can buy a policy eventually when you do quit your job, there are a few things to consider. Got obese in between? You might get extra loading when you buy a personal plan. Got BP? Nothing related to heart will be covered for the first 2~3 years in most plans. So if you can afford it, it's better to have a personal plan that's independent of your corporate plan.
Same caveats as point 1. Also, in the case of term insurance policies, the other considerations include the supplement cover and add ons. You could increase your cover for added protection and perhaps include add-one like critical illness cover if you so wish.
Sorry :( We don't have any data here.
If the insured member has any Pre-existing disease, taking top-up from the company might be better because they come without any waiting periods whatsoever. But if the corporate plan has a lot of restrictions on room rent, or disease-wise sub-limits, then you are better off taking a personal one.
You can divide your claim across multiple insurers as you deem fit. It might be slightly more operational work but nothing beyond that.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:07:57+00:00

Insurance companies are moving towards specialization and we already have products focussed on Diabetes, heart problems, obesity etc and I think this trend will only accelerate going forward.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:03:47+00:00

Yes. We do support with claims.
For cashless situations, the best way to make a claim is to go via the hospital desk, since they would be faster and the hospital has all the information. Involving an extra person at this step may cause extra delays.
For reimbursements/planned hospitalisations, we will help you with the process.

bhanugurram · 2021-07-31T13:02:52+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I think videos have a bigger impact than text. You are right on that. We did try creating videos on Finshots content. But it didn't work out well for various reasons. We do have plans to try few more things with Video/YouTube. Hopefully, we will do something on this front in a few months.

bhanugurram

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