KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 8): Malaysia\u2019s general insurers are facing continued pressure in the medical and health insurance segment as medical inflation far outpaces premium growth, according to the General Insurance Association of Malaysia (PIAM).<\/p>\n
PIAM said the segment has been recording underwriting losses for several years, driven by rising hospital costs and higher medical claims frequency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is medical inflation is running at 15%, and the insurance inflation has not been keeping pace. After a few years, it becomes almost insurmountable. So the industry is going to take big losses on that stuff,\u201d said PIAM deputy chairman Antony Lee Fook Weng at a media briefing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
For the first half of 2025, the segment recorded a combined ratio of 104.2%, reflecting continued underwriting losses. The industry registered a loss of RM23 million from medical and health insurance during the period despite a 6.5% year-on-year growth in premiums.<\/p>\n
PIAM chief executive officer Chua Kim Soon said the losses were mainly driven by individual health policies, which saw both higher claim frequency and rising severity.<\/p>\n
According to him, average claim severity increased from RM12,000 to RM14,000 among general insurers.<\/p>\n
Lee, meanwhile, said the widening gap between healthcare cost escalation and insurance pricing remains a key structural challenge for the industry.<\/p>\n
Measures under consideration to address the issue include a basic medical insurance framework and greater cost transparency among healthcare providers to improve affordability and manage claims inflation, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 8): Malaysia\u2019s general insurers are facing continued pressure in the medical and health insurance segment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-65489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}