Every kind of cover, and what it actually pays for.
Each type opens to the clause that decides the claim — the room-rent cap, the IDV, the declared value — before the price. Pick a line to see its buy flow, plans and exclusions.
Health
Health Insurance
Pays your hospital bill directly to the hospital, so you do not fund a medical emergency from savings. The number that matters is not the premium — it is the room-rent cap, the pre-existing waiting period and the co-pay, because those three decide how much of the bill actually gets paid.
Critical Illness & Cancer
Pays a lump sum on diagnosis of a listed illness — cancer, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure. It is not health insurance: it does not pay hospital bills, it replaces the income you lose during a year of treatment and recovery. Most people need both, not one.
Personal Accident
Pays a lump sum for accidental death or permanent disability, and a weekly amount if you cannot work temporarily. It is astonishingly cheap — about ₹1,900 a year for ₹50 L — because accidents are rarer than illness. It is also the only cover that pays for disability, which is financially worse than death and far more likely.
Life & savings
Life Insurance
A contract that pays your family a lump sum if you die. Pure term insurance is the only version that does this cheaply — everything else on this line mixes in an investment, which makes both the cover and the returns worse. Buy term, invest the difference elsewhere.
Investment Plans
Insurance policies that also invest — ULIPs, endowments and guaranteed-return plans. We place them, and we will tell you honestly that for most people a term plan plus an index fund gives more cover and better returns. Buy these for the guaranteed-return or tax-structuring reasons, not as your main life cover.
Retirement & Pension
Turns a lump sum into an income you cannot outlive. Two halves: accumulation, where you build the corpus, and annuity, where you convert it into monthly income. The annuity rate you get on the day you convert matters more than twenty years of fund performance, and almost nobody is told that.
Motor
Motor Insurance
Covers your car, two-wheeler, truck or EV against damage and theft, and covers what you owe someone else if you injure them or damage their property. Only the third-party part is legally required — the part that protects your own vehicle is optional, and the part people regret skipping.
Two-wheeler Insurance
The cheapest insurance most Indians ever buy, and the one most often left to lapse. Third-party is legally compulsory. Own-damage is optional and costs a few hundred rupees a year, which is less than a single set of body panels.
Commercial Vehicle
Cover for vehicles that earn money — trucks, taxis, tempos, buses and delivery fleets. Rated on gross vehicle weight, permit type and route, not on the vehicle price. The part operators underestimate is legal liability to employees and to the goods being carried.
Home & travel
Home Insurance
Covers the building, the things inside it, or both. Two separate decisions hide inside one policy: the structure is rebuilt at construction cost, while contents are paid at market value unless you specifically buy new-for-old. Most under-insurance on this line comes from confusing the two.
Travel Insurance
Covers a medical emergency abroad, where a hospital bill is in dollars and your Indian health policy does not apply. Trip cancellation and lost baggage are the parts people buy it for, and the medical cover is the part that actually saves them.
Shop & Office Package
One policy bundling everything a small premises needs: fire and burglary on the shop and stock, money in transit to the bank, plate glass, electronic equipment, and liability to customers who hurt themselves inside. Cheaper as a package than as six separate policies.
Business
Employee Benefits
Cover bought by a company for its people. It is underwritten on the group, not on individuals, which means no medical tests, no age loading per person, and pre-existing conditions covered from day one — three things an employee could never buy for themselves.
Fire & Property
Covers buildings, plant, stock and fit-outs against fire, flood, earthquake, riot and impact. The whole line turns on one number: the declared value. Declare less than the true rebuild cost and the average clause cuts every claim proportionately, whatever the loss.
Marine & Transit
Covers goods while they move — by road, rail, sea or air. Sold either per consignment or as an open cover you declare against monthly. Who insures the shipment depends on the Incoterm you agreed, and getting that wrong means two parties each assuming the other did it.
Workmen Compensation
Your legal liability to pay compensation when an employee is injured or killed at work. This is not optional generosity — the Act fixes the amounts, and they are payable whether or not you were at fault. Insurance simply funds a liability you already have.
Liability
Liability Insurance
Covers what other people claim from you: a client suing over your advice, a customer injured by your product, a regulator naming your directors, a visitor hurt on your premises. These are the losses that end businesses rather than dent them, and they are the cheapest large cover you can buy.
Cyber Insurance
Covers what happens after a breach: forensic investigation, data restoration, regulatory fines, ransom, business interruption, and claims from customers whose data you lost. Available for businesses and, increasingly, for individuals facing UPI fraud and identity theft.