Stunned by Covid-19 deaths, youngsters in India rush for life insurance plans

A surge in Covid-19 deaths and cases made youngsters in India rush for Insurance Plans.

The official tally puts the number of deaths due to Covid-19 at 380,000, the third-highest after the United States and Brazil,

Health experts say India’s numbers are utterly undervalued due to the low levels of testing for the deadly virus and more people have died in India than anywhere else in the world.

When a devastating second wave of the pandemic peaked in India during April and May, the numbers of people aged between 25 and 35 buying term insurance was 30 percent higher than in the previous three months collective, said PolicyBazaar, India’s largest online insurance aggregator.

Whereas Insurers did not reveal how many plans they sold, citing business privacy, but many said it was in the “high thousands”.

“The current pandemic has led to higher awareness around the need for financial protection and the inadequacy of the current insurance coverage,” said Mr. Niraj Shah, the chief financial officer of HDFC Life Insurance.

Industry administrators said investigations about insurance plans have whizzed although the second wave of infections sinking, probably due to strong forecasts of a third wave given the slow start India made to the massive task of vaccinating its people.