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Insurance
Birla Sun Life Insurance Ties Up With Quest Diagnostics
Quest Diagnostics will be the special provider of full-service
medical screening and diagnostic testing of life insurance candidates
Birla Sun Life Insurance Company Ltd, the pioneer of unit linked life insurance
plans amongst the private life insurers in India, announced the appointment
of Quest Diagnostics India Private Ltd as its exclusive provider of health assessment
services in India. The company has entered into a long-term agreement with Quest
Diagnostics India Pvt Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics
Incorporated, an international leading provider of diagnostic testing, information
and services, to provide health assessment services.
Under terms of the agreement, Quest Diagnostics will be the special provider
of full-service medical screening and diagnostic testing of life insurance candidates,
and related administrative services for Birla Sun Life's individual life-insurance
underwriting business. In the sales of life insurance plans, a very important
point is the customer experience during medical examination. To ensure standardisation
and quality experience, Birla Sun Life Insurance has been evaluating processes
which would result in consistent and positive experience across the country.
With this objective in mind, the Quest Diagnostics partnership has been forged.
Demand for insurance products in India has grown significantly in recent years,
driven by deregulation of the insurance industry in 2000 and a growing middle
class with the disposable income to buy insurance policies. It has been predicted
that the premium market for India's blossoming life insurance sector, now at
$40 billion, will more than double to $80 billion to $100 billion by 2012.
Quest Diagnostics will provide a range of health management services to Birla
Sun Life Insurance, including laboratory testing through its new 65,000 square-foot
diagnostic testing facility in Gurgaon, as well as case management and appointment
scheduling of medical exams by trained and accredited physicians. Quest Diagnostics
will serve Birla Sun Life Insurance using the company's proprietary ExamView
medical services and Case View laboratory-test ordering and reporting software,
which is used by the company's risk assessment business, Exam-One, based in
Lenexa, KS, to serve insurance companies in up to 20 countries.
Presently, the underwriting at Birla Sun Life Insurance is a three-step process
where the agent primarily liaisons with the medical service provider. Under
the new arrangement with Quest Diagnostics, the agent would log-in the query
at the call-centre to arrange for pre-policy medical tests. From there, Quest
Diagnostics would take over. Hence, a common inter-face would be present.
Said Vikram Mehmi, President and CEO, Birla Sun Life Insurance, "Birla
Sun Life Insurance has, once again, opened a new chapter in the history of Life
Insurance in India, whereby we envisage setting new levels of service, new standards
in underwriting and improving quality of underwriting and risks involved. Quality
and standardisation of medical reports and effective handling of underwriting
and operations are the benefits to be reaped by this initiative. Birla Sun Life
Insurance is happy to associate with Quest Diagnostics, who work with Sun Life
Financial in some countries and are an established name world-wide in providing
diagnostic services."
EH News Bureau
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