Hi all,

I am looking at medical card, and I have a preference for standalone card instead of an ILP. However, someone told me that the premium at renewal for standalone medical card is not guaranteed. This is coupled with a bad experience, where one of my parent took a standalone medical card. Upon first claim, the next year's premium was slapped with a 75% loading due to "increased risk".

I was told that ILP won't have such problem (by an agent, of course). Any increase in the premium is based on the pool's risk, not an individual's risk. However, reading from RinggitPlus suggest that actually this will happen regardless of the plan.



Would like to ask sifu-sifu which should I go for? Standalone v ILP, and what are the terminology I should take note while buying these products?


TL;DR: will my this year's claim impact my next year's medical card renewal premium? (for both standalone and ILP).

Thanks all.

FYI, I see a premium increase of 20% even though I NEVER made any medical claim under me and my kids life+investment+medical link insurance.
The bottom line, buy it for a peace of mind and as long as you can afford it.
Cause in the end of the day, the insurance company will find ANY reason to increase your premium.

yeah understand that. I think a few factors that causes the increase in premium:
1. age (increase in age = increase premium)
2. overall pool cost (if tons of people claim on the pool, the overall risk increased = increased premium)
3. individual health circumstances (if the person claim this year, next year increase premium cause riskier).

I am okay with (1) and (2), I'm totally against (3). But yea I get your point, chances are I won't know which is the factor. We as consumer are like their cash cow... when need more cash then milk us, lol.

My friend tell me insurance is like... when the weather is good, they offer you an umbrella but when it's raining and snowing, they'll take it away... just when you need it.

That is excuse. True for old standalone cards. False for nowadays standalone cards.

The new cards all guaranteed renewal unless you commited fraud or didn't pay in full and on time. No more additional charges once got illness. Your parents time yes. Nowadays card no more.

Only difference
1. One no investment and one have investment
2. The investment part at best Epf return (very rare)
3. Premium holiday. If you suddenly can't afford you can stop paying for a while but you can't do that with standalone.
4. If the fund is not performing (like majority of the time), you need to increase your premium or do a lump sum top-up to sustain your insurance plan until the end of contract or else your insurance plan drop form say 80 years old to 76 years old.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Oct 8 2024, 10:49 PM

1. Please don't rely on ringgitplus for insurance information. Seriously, no. Kinda unread what you have read.

2. When you buy from medical be it standalone or ILP, most of them do not impose additional loading when you claim. Why I say most? In the past some of the general insurer do have this terms and conditions where they can do so. Add loading or dont renew. However this is somewhat outdated. Also, even this is somewhat hearsay that I picked up. I can't fully verify. But if you open website of few famous brands (not general insurance) you will realise don't have these terms and conditions where they can suddenly don't offer, etc...

Caveat, however, recently, one company, launch a new medical product (it's a rider). Basically the concept they use is similar to your car insurance punya NCD. If you don't claim, you get discount. If you claim, you pay more. If you claim even higher amount, you pay even more. So it does cut both ways.

3. Due to complexity of how insurance works, most people tend to not understand what is going on because it is complicated I have seen people in the industry, agents misunderstand, so not specific to you. In the case of your parents, it could be due to both old age and repricing effect that resulted in that 75% increase. Normal customer tak tau, ingat naik harga sebab claim (confirmation bias). Sebenarnya, medical revision. Anyway, this is just my educated guess, could be wrong.

4. Individual health circumstances matters when you purchase. After you purchase, provided you were truthful, insurance companies don't suddenly penalise you.

While no source, again hearsay, BNM kinda soft ban this. So, the insurance companies (edit) can't decline to renew you cause you claim a lot, etc...

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 8 2024, 11:27 PM

Thanks Adele, very clear explanation. I am a skeptic though, I would like to know if there are certain "keyword" I can find in their terms that ensure they don't do individualised premium increase.

Don't have advice for this.

They need to state what they can do in future. They won't state what they won't do. Make sense?

And yes, most definitely, you can't fully trust an agent on this either.

Can you share which standalone medical card which you go for as I'm looking for one as well? Can PM if is this is not something you want to discuss publicly

I got nothing to hide.

You can buy either AIA or GE.
I choose AIA for
1. No issue with GL. GE will delay your GL as much as possible to try deny you the GL. Boots on the ground tell me this. GE, cuepacscare, micare all problematic.


I will buy gathercare as backup as premium is fixed at RM300+/year. Yes fixed.

I checked Gathercare, if you look at the monthly deductions from the sharing deposits, on average about 43 MYR is spent per month. So 43* 12 = 516 MYR. 516 + 360 = 876 MYR per year. So the net cash outflow is not 360 but about 900 MYR.

But indeed with 900 MYR, you get pretty decent medical benefits... I am just worried about continuity. In the early years after launch the monthly shared deposit deduction was as low as single digit, but now it's nearing the 50 MYR monthly limit already.

medical insurance is for B40...

if your T20 or upper middle income group... might as well save more of emergency monei... rather to buy insurance or medical card..

set aside for general emergency expenses of about 300-500k...

after 2020... insurance starting to feel like a scam...

try to proactively live a healthy life instead... rather than degrading your lifestyle and health then seek treatment...

insurance is a scam mostly, when time to claim , they will lili lala gaga gugu,

Thanks for your feedback. Is your AIA medical card plan name A-Plus MediFlex? Saw quite a number of standalone medical plan from AIA web site.

Mediflex is the replacement for my insurance. Mine was med regular with booster. Medregular I think have higher annual limit Vs mediflex by 100k. I think anything above RM1m annual limitis sufficient so I value more of post hospitalisation coverage. But will see what is the latest medical insurance 10 years down the road.

I kena before insurance do not allow me to claim in medicine used (not supplement) during my son admission. Amount is small so never mind la, don’t want to make a complaint but it does sounds doggy to me.

Usually won't but for most ppl, no claims or when claim already pay more than the medical cost Liao...like buying 4D

Sinchew reports:

https://www.sinchew.com.my/news/20241027/nation/6029885

When comes to insurance premium increased, our perception is always ages, inflation and cost of insurance raised, and this is also what the agent always told us.
One of the important factor of premium reprice where many ppl overlook, is the pool of product the insurance company allocated. When we buy an insurance or pay our premium, our fund will be allocate into a shared pool where, this pool will continue to be used when new customer buy their insurance, or existing customer renew their premium. In 10 - 15 years or maybe less, new product may be introduce, insurance company may decide to create another fund's pool to cater for all the new product premiums, that time they will hard sell the new product with more benifits, more coverage, and more lower premium, this will cause almost all their new customer to take up the new product, and left the old product no one buying, this will even cause the existing customer in old product upgrade to new product but of couse they would need to re-assess their health condition again.

What this means.
1) insurance company doing this is to reduce their product premium, by segregating healthy individual and high risk individual, making their new product more attrative to young and healthy generation.
2) Those eldest with sub-optimal health or with existing health condition may not able to buy the new product, they have to stay in the old product funding pool. Many of them may already bought the insurance 10 or 20 years ago, and they are fully healthy the first time they buy it, and they may choose to pay high premium for longer sustainbility that time.
3) Insurance premium increase not only due to cost of insurance - inflation, increase of age, medical/hospital cost, but also due to new funding pool introduce by insurance company.
4) The reason to creating the new funding pool is to attract more new customer with more lower premium. The premium can stay low due to insurance company have segregate their existing loyal customer which already bought ther product 10 or 20 years but with health issue or old age into another old pool.
5) This will resulted only bunch of policy holders with health condition and older age remain stay in the old funding pool, no new holder, and continue lossing healthy policy holders due to switching to new product.
6) Finally those stay in the old pool will faced the continuous premium increased year over year due to unbalanced type of policy holders. People bought 40 years of sustaibility policy on age 30, by age 50 premium may goes double or more due to the new funding pool introduce, that time agent may tell you spike of the price due to insurance cost. This will also cause situation where old funding pool full of those eldest and holders with medical condition, so price spike is explainable and unavoidable. As a result of price hike many in the old pool have no choice but choose to abandone their already paid 10 or 20 years policy, and also these holder no longer eligible applying any new policy product. I wont said insurance company doing it with intention but customer abandone policies in the old funding pool definitely will greatly give them advantage by reducing their claim profile risk.
7) We as consumer do not hv visibility when a new pool been introduce, funding in and out from the old pool, and the statistic type of holders in the pool.
8) Premium projection in SI will only take take consideration of our age, inflation and cost of insurance, they don't project fund pool, as the insurance company can introduce pool anytime as they wish, actual premium increased will be far different from what been stated in SI.
9) What's more is if you buy a policy when almost reach to the end lifetime of the funding pool, and a new pool introduce with the new product, you will face the substantially premium increased which far away from your projected premium in your SI, even you have 15 years sustainbility quoted in your policy this may still happend in 2 years, 3 years or 5 years time. Besides, we have no visibility in their pool lifetime, so we wont know when it start and end. Of couse anyone qualified can still buy the new product, with the new health assessment and also reset the 6 years agent's commission.
10) We may said that this will not impact us, because who doesn't want low premium price due to the new pool implemented, but we all will get old one day and potential health problem too, that's why we choose longer sustaibility with higher premium price when first buy, new premium raised should not be too far away from our sustaibility amount as listed in SI, and the increase of premium due to new pool introduced is something indeed unethical.

contestchris already posted a picture that show old pool have fewer money cause money in the pool have been used up. So if you are healthy, change new plan every 10 years to overcome the above problem. That's is what I will be doing.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Nov 3 2024, 07:09 AM