HYDERABAD: Barely half of Hyderabadis feel ‘safe’ in the face of financial insecurities, despite the fact that a considerable number of them own insurance policies, according to a survey -- ‘India Protection Quotient 2019’ conducted by Max Life Insurance.
The study mapped over 16 Indian cities on various criteria which showed their attitudes towards financial protection and awareness levels on various aspects of life and term insurance.
Mapping how financially safe urban Indians, including the Hyderabadis feels, the survey mapped their ‘India Protection Quotient’, which looks into how secure people feel against unforeseen financial constraints.
While the survey found that no Indian city had majority of its population feeling protected, Hyderabad scored a 44 on the scale of 100, right after Delhi which scored 46. This despite the fact that amongst the four quadrants of the country, south India, which had the maximum coverage of Life Insurance at 74 per cent.
The study noted that “urban India feels unprotected. Though two third of urban Indians own life insurance, only one third of urban Indians feel protected.”
Awareness and ownership
The study also looked into how aware the urbanites were about the various kinds of life insurance products, their coverage and terms and mapped it under the category of ‘Knowledge Index’ on a scale of 1 to 100.
On this scale, Hyderabad scored 50 points, indication only about a half of the city’s population is correctly aware about this tool of financial security.
And while life insurance was still well known among urbanites, awareness about term insurance, which is for a stipulated period of time was far lower with only one-fifth of population owning them. In Hyderabad only 23 per cent of people converted the awareness about such schemes into actual ownership of term insurance.
The survey further notes that the main reason why actual ownership is still poor in the city and across the country is because of socio cultural conditioning of Indians.