Allianz: Disabled seen as equals for insurance policies

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22, 2015:

Aiming to promote a more inclusive society, Allianz Malaysia Bhd has launching insurance solutions for persons with disabilities (PWDs) by providing them with three products that essentially treats them as equals in obtaining insurance policies.

“Before today, PWDs were able to purchase insurance but the underwriting guides have always led us to impose loading on them with the assumptions that PWDs are a higher risk population,” said Allianz Malaysia chief executive officer Zakri Khir today.

“In truth, they do not need special treatment, they just needed to be treated fairly.”

He said the Allianz Ability Life is a yearly renewable term insurance plan for PWDs, specially created from all the feedback and research Allianz has compiled from its Innovation Incubator workshop – a design thinking workshop aimed at finding business solutions for social issues.

“The benefits and features in this life insurance plan are in case of an unfortunate death of life assured during the policy term, provided all premiums are paid up to date. The benefit will be sum assured and policy cover will terminate immediately on death of the life assured.”

Zakri said the premiums paid are eligible for income tax deduction as per Section 49 of the Income Tax Act.

The other two products are the Allianz Care Individual, a hospitalisation plan and Allianz Individual PA, a personal accident cover by the general insurance entity.

“These two are existing plans that we are now extending to PWDs.

“The hospitalisation plan will give PWDs a peace of mind regarding their healthcare costs in the event of hospitalisation. They have a choice of cashless or non-cashless admission and a guaranteed renewal if no claims within first two years.

“There will be a 24-hour call centre for guarantee letter issuance, providing dedicated service direct to customers as well.

“The personal accident plan provides compensation in the event of injuries, further disability or death caused solely by violent, accidental, external and visible events. It comes with five affordable prices ranging from RM10,000 to RM50,000 coverage that is 24-7.”

Zakri said both the life insurance and general insurance units of Allianz Malaysia have a total of 17,000 agents that have already begun their training towards these new policies.

“We have already begun training our agents to promote these policies. It’s been a week but there has already been PWDs taking it up,” says Allianz Life Insurance Malaysia Bhd CEO Rangam Bir.

He added that there are currently 500,000 registered PWDs in Malaysia. with many more unregistered.

“We will try to reach out to them via our agents and collaborations with the various NGOs that represent them. This is part of our effort to recognise PWDs as our equals and eliminate discrimination towards them,” said Zakri.

Currently, the Allianz policies cater to PWDs with physical disabilities but not for those with mental or learning disabilities.

“The reason behind this is because people with mental and learning disabilities may not be fully capable of accepting an insurance policy on their own accord,” Rangam explained.

“There might be plans in the future for us to explore. These PWDs policies are fully generated by Allianz and it’s our first time doing this, there will be a lot of exploration and learning for us too.”