Health insurance portability: how to port your policy and keep credits

Unhappy with your health insurer’s service, network or premium? You don’t have to start from zero to leave. Portability lets you move to another insurer and keep the time you’ve already served on waiting periods.

What carries over

IRDAI, the insurance regulator, lets you transfer these credits when you port, to the extent of your previous sum insured:

• the no claim bonus
• specific waiting periods already served, for listed treatments
• the waiting period for a pre-existing disease
• time towards the 60-month moratorium period, after which a claim can’t be contested for non-disclosure, except for fraud

The new policy must show your continuous cover since the very first policy. Portability works for individual, family floater and group indemnity policies. A floater ports as a whole, with all the family members on it.

When and how to apply

Porting happens at renewal. IRDAI’s process, step by step:

1. Apply in the window. Approach the new insurer at least 30 days before renewal, but not earlier than 60 days before it. Insurers may consider a request within 15 days of renewal, but must then ensure there is no break.
2. Fill two forms. The new insurer gives you a portability form along with its proposal form.
3. Data moves in 72 hours. The new insurer requests your policy and claim history through the Insurance Information Bureau portal. Your old insurer must share it within 72 hours.
4. Decision in 5 days. The new insurer must decide and tell you within 5 days of getting that data.

What porting doesn’t guarantee

The new insurer can say no. The 2024 regulations allow portability subject to the new insurer’s underwriting policy. It can ask for tests, charge a higher premium or decline. So keep your old policy alive until the new one is issued. If you let it lapse, you lose every credit.

Extra cover starts fresh. Credits carry only up to your old sum insured. If you raise the cover while porting, the extra amount is new cover. For the 60-month rule, IRDAI says the clock on an increased sum insured starts from the date of the increase.

An illustration. Say Ravi has a 5 lakh rupee policy and has served two years of a three-year pre-existing disease wait. He ports and takes 10 lakh with the new insurer. On the first 5 lakh, only one year of waiting is left. The extra 5 lakh is new cover, so the new insurer can apply its waiting periods to that part afresh.

Migration: switching plans with the same insurer

Moving to a different product with your current insurer is called migration. The same credits carry over, to the extent of the earlier sum insured. If an insurer withdraws your product, it must offer you a one-time renewal within 90 days of the withdrawal, or migration to another suitable product.

Did you know? You can’t be refused renewal just because you made a claim. IRDAI’s rules also bar fresh medical checks at renewal unless you raise the sum insured. So porting is a choice, never a forced exit.

The takeaway. Start 60 days before renewal, never let the old policy lapse, and remember that only your existing cover carries its credits. If you’re porting a policy for older family members, read health insurance for parents. Splitting a shared policy? See family floater vs individual cover. And if an insurer later cuts a claim, here is what to do when a health claim is rejected.

More to read: the health insurance guide, how much health cover, and health insurance basics.