Sagicor announces new insurance plan for healthcare heroes

Caribbean insurance behemoth Sagicor on Tuesday announced the launch of a new product aimed at providing much-needed coverage to the healthcare practitioners now on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle. Ironically, while these medical professionals risk their own lives to save others, Sagicor said it found that many either had inadequate insurance coverage or, in an increasing number of cases, no coverage at all.

To address this, Sagicor’s vice president of group insurance Susan Boyea said the new product, which it is calling the “Healthcare Heroes Group Plan," offers coverage to all healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, dentists, veterinarians, pharmacists, and orderlies as well as administrative and auxiliary staff who work in health facilities. As a group health insurance plan, it will likewise cover the spouses and children of healthcare professionals.

Launched on International Nurses Day, the goal for the new product was simple enough. Sagicor said it wanted to provide the most affordable and broad-based insurance coverage to the true heroes of the coronavirus fight and, unsurprisingly, healthcare workers led the way.

Along those lines, the new product has been conceptualised as a bundle which includes life insurance, accidental death and critical illness insurance with three different tiers of coverage. And it is available to healthcare workers in several Sagicor markets including Aruba, Belize, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

For the TT market, the lowest level of benefits includes life insurance coverage to the tune of $250,000, an accidental death benefit of $250,000 and critical illness coverage of $100,000 that will cover some ten serious illnesses including cancer, heart attack, blindness, stroke, multiple sclerosis, deafness, and diabetes. The amount of coverage increases to $1 million dollars for both life and accidental death coverage and $300,00 in critical illness coverage at the highest tier.

The plan includes a complimentary offer of up to $200,000 worth of life insurance and accidental cover and Sagicor said premiums would range from $85 a month for the lowest tier of coverage to $300 a month for the highest.

Beyond these top-line benefits, the company’s primary focus has been on affordability, in part because price remains one of the major deterrents to Caribbean nationals securing adequate insurance coverage.

“There is a space out there that’s not insured,” said Boyea in a somewhat direct appeal to healthcare employers. “There is a space out there that needs to be covered. We are reaching out to you and will work with you to bring you on board.”

Speaking during a Zoom call to announce the new group plan on Tuesday, Sagicor Life’s president and chief executive Ravi Rambarran said an internal analysis showed healthcare professionals as a group were significantly underinsured. Yet, their yeoman work since the covid19 pandemic began had motivated the company to accelerate plans to address the issue.

“This initiative is a unique blend of corporate social responsibility and business, said Rambarran who revealed that Sagicor intends to launch additional products for other categories of employees on the covid19 frontlines besides healthcare workers. They are likely to include sanitation, transportation, and food-industry employees—all heroes, according to Rambarran.

“We’re creating the Sagicor universe of heroes,” Rambarran said, referring to the popular movie series. “But these are real heroes—unlike the fictitious Marvel universe of heroes.”

Whether or not those new products come on stream in the short term, the covid19 pandemic does appear to have been the catalyst for a raft of product innovations at the insurance company.

Two weeks ago, it announced a telemedicine initiative that would extend its healthcare coverage during the covid19 pandemic for patients who consulted their doctors virtually and honour claims related to general practitioner consultations and other specialist consultations.