BSP Life managing director Michael Nacola says the increasing insurance payouts for 2017 compared to 2016, is linked to the increase in chronic illnesses.

Mr Nacola was making his submissions to the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs on BSP Life on the RBF Insurance 2017 Annual Report on Tuesday.

He said BSP Life paid out $10.5 million, a 31 per cent in­crease from 2016.

Chronic illnesses like cancer and heart problem, he said, had increased in the younger age bracket of 30 to 45 years, which is linked di­rectly to the non-communicable dis­eases (NCD) problem found in Fiji.

“The maximum age at entry for medical insurance is up till the age of 60 and maximum age of cover is 65. Beyond age of 65, the cover does not continue,” Mr Nacola said.

“The more facilities we can have in Fiji to support the ter­tiary care (tertiary insurance), the better, because it ena­bles us to be able to get the treatments done locally instead of sending people overseas.

“There are still large leakage on oncology, cancer treat­ments, critical hard cases, there are a wide range of cases for which we have to send people overseas.

“It would be better paying ourselves in Fiji than paying providers overseas for giving us the services.

“As for travel insurance, we have been recoding signifi­cant losses over the period of time. The number of claims that was coming from the travel insurance was far more than the premiums that we were receiving.

“We’ve got to a stage where the travel insurance was not sustainable any further so we had to exit,” Mr Nacola said.

Meanwhile, BSP Life’s contribution to the health insur­ance market in 2017 was $88.4 million and BSP Life paid out $58.6 million in terms of claims.

This was an increase of $22.5 million in 2016 and of the $58.6 million, 65 per cent or $38.2 million was for maturity of life insurance. Edited by Ranoba Baoa

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