Which Insurance Companies Get the Most Complaints in India? IRDAI Data 2023-24

IRDAI and Insurance Ombudsman data for FY2023-24 shows which insurers attract the most claim complaints in India — and why raw complaint counts alone can mislead you.

Before you buy a health or motor policy, one question matters more than the premium: if this insurer says no, how hard will it be to make them say yes? Complaint data is the closest thing India has to a public answer, and IRDAI publishes it every year.

How many insurance complaints does India actually file?

In FY2023-24 the 17 Insurance Ombudsman centres across India received 52,575 complaints and disposed of 49,705 of them. Of those disposed, 12,855 were treated as non-entertainable, usually because the complainant had not first exhausted the insurer grievance process or the dispute fell outside the Ombudsman mandate. Source: Council for Insurance Ombudsmen and IRDAI Annual Report 2023-24.

Complaints specifically against health insurance companies rose 21.7 per cent year on year, from 25,873 in FY2022-23 to 31,490 in FY2023-24. Health is now the single largest source of insurance grievance in India, and claim repudiation is the single largest reason within it.

Which insurers recorded the most complaints in FY2023-24?

By raw complaint volume, the five insurers with the most policyholder complaints recorded in FY2023-24 were:

• Star Health and Allied Insurance — 13,308 complaints, of which 10,196 related to claim repudiation
• Care Health Insurance — 3,718 complaints
• Niva Bupa Health Insurance — 2,511 complaints
• National Insurance — 2,196 complaints
• New India Assurance — 1,602 complaints

A raw complaint count tells you how big an insurer is at least as much as it tells you how badly it behaves. Read it alongside the per-policy ratio, never on its own.

Why the biggest number is not automatically the worst insurer

Star Health is the largest standalone health insurer in India by policy count. An insurer with several times more policies in force will naturally generate more complaints in absolute terms even if its per-customer experience is identical to a smaller rival. This is why IRDAI also reports grievances per 10,000 policies or claims, and why that ratio is the fairer comparison.

On the per-10,000 measure, Bajaj Allianz General reported among the lowest grievance ratios of the major health insurers at roughly 3.07 complaints per 10,000 claims in FY2023-24, with IndusInd General and New India Assurance also reporting relatively low ratios. Note that New India appears in both lists: high absolute volume, low ratio, precisely because of its size.

What complaint data does not tell you

• It counts complaints that were escalated, not claims that were wrongly denied. Most people never escalate at all.
• It does not distinguish a weak claim from a strong claim that was mishandled.
• Absolute counts track market share closely, so year-on-year growth for a fast-growing insurer can look alarming without meaning anything.
• It says nothing about how quickly an insurer settles the claims it does approve.

How to check an insurer before you buy

• Read the grievance and claims section of the IRDAI Annual Report for the relevant year rather than a marketing page.
• Compare the grievances per 10,000 policies figure, not the raw count.
• Look at the incurred claims ratio for general insurers — 82.52 per cent across non-life insurers in FY2023-24.
• For life cover, check the individual death claim settlement ratio, which averaged 96.82 per cent within 30 days in FY2023-24.
• Read the actual policy wording for sub-limits, co-payment and waiting periods, which is where most disputes are eventually decided.

If your claim has already been rejected

Complaint statistics are useful before you buy and largely academic afterwards. Once a specific claim has been repudiated, what matters is the exact ground cited in the rejection letter, whether that ground is supported by your policy wording, and whether you escalate correctly and on time.

If you are at that stage, start with our guide to a rejected health insurance claim or read how the Insurance Ombudsman process works.

Related: RiskPe's claim recovery service reviews rejected claims and tells you honestly whether yours is worth pursuing.