Life Insurance Riders

Life insurance offers various riders to meet individual needs, including:

• Critical Illness Rider: Provides financial benefits if diagnosed with a critical illness.
• Disability Rider: Offers benefits in case of disability.
• Accidental Death Benefit Rider: Pays benefits if the policyholder dies in an accident.
• Income Benefit on Accidental Death Rider: Provides monthly income to the nominee upon the policyholder's accidental death.
• Waiver of Premium Rider: Waives future premiums if the policyholder faces an accident or mishap

Riders and add-on covers are both additional and optional benefits that you can add to your base policy for value addition. However, the terms differ as riders belong to the life insurance category and add-ons belong to the general insurance category. In both cases, you pay an additional premium to benefit from the extra coverage that your base policy cannot offer.

You may want to consider adding one or more essential riders* to enhance your policy coverage. Riders provide you financial coverage against critical illness, accidental death, or disability which may not be covered under a standard plan. For a relatively additional cost, riders can help safeguard your family and finances from unexpected events and keep them financially secure during unforeseen events.

These are some of the key benefits of including a rider in your policy:

• By adding a rider to your life insurance policy, you may increase or enhance your policy coverage.
• Adding a rider to your policy can also be more cost-effective as compared to purchasing multiple policies for additional coverage.
• By adding suitable riders to your life insurance plan, you can avail of several benefits under one policy, such as coverage against critical illnesses, accidental disability, etc.

The choice of rider for your term insurance plan depends on you and your family’s needs, as only you can decide what’s best. Your decision will mainly depend on two factors:

• The risk you may need protection from includes coverage against hospitalisation expenses, major and minor illnesses and injuries, critical and terminal illness, disability and so on.
• Your need may also include receiving a lump sum amount to pay for huge expenses, a specified income payout to replace the loss of income or a waiver of premium to keep the base policy active without the payment of premiums.

By adding the waiver of premium rider to your life insurance policy, your future premium payments can be waived off in case of your death, critical illness or accidental disability. For the waiver of premium rider to be effective, the proof of your death or disability needs to be provided, after which you or your family can be relieved from the stress of paying the policy premiums even as the policy continues to offer life cover protection to your loved ones.

Yes, riders carry an additional premium which will have to be paid along with the base policy premiums after the rider is attached to your policy. This makes it easier to handle the premiums since you only have to manage a single payment for extra coverage instead of two.

When you add riders to your life insurance policy, you will need to pay an extra premium for each rider you add. Hence, at the time of purchasing your policy, carefully plan which riders you would like to add to your life insurance plan as per your needs and your budget.

Having an additional policy means extra premium payments for each policy, which can be quite expensive. Also, over a period of time, managing multiple policies can become quite complicated, with multiple premium payments and different benefits to keep track of.

However, adding a rider to your existing life insurance plan may secure you against a range of specified risks covered under the rider. Each optional rider comes at an additional but affordable premium, which enhances your policy coverage without the need for a new policy.

If your life insurance policy includes a Critical Illness Rider and you are diagnosed with a covered critical illness, you should immediately intimate your life insurance provider. This can typically be done through the customer service touchpoints such as insurer’s website, mobile app, customer service helpline, or by visiting the nearest branch.

To initiate the claim, submit a filled claim form along with the mandatory required documents such as the diagnosis report, medical test results, ID proof, and policy document. The insurer will review the documents and may ask for additional information or a medical evaluation if required. Once approved, the benefit amount will be paid as per your plan option chosen, helping you manage treatment costs, recovery, and any loss of income.

Yes, if you add a health rider or a critical illness benefit rider to your life insurance policy, then you can benefit from tax¹ deductions on the rider premiums paid towards the policy under Section 80D of the Income Tax Act.