Health is a broad concept which includes not only physical wellbeing but also mental wellbeing. With the growing number of diseases and ailments, cost of healthcare is also increasing. Traditionally, personal healthcare costs, like costs of treatments, surgical costs, were paid out either through a health insurance scheme or paid out of pocket.
Medical loan is emerging as a new option of personal healthcare funding for those are not able to pay for the expenses through above said traditional means.
A medical loan (sometimes known as a health loan) is a type of personal loan which is used to pay off the medical expenses. It is a loan used to cover medical costs. These kind of loans can be used to pay for a variety of health-related treatments, such as elective operations, procedures, medications, and other associated outlays. There are a number of companies that lends loan for such expenses, including a few banks, cooperative lending organizations, off-line lenders and online lenders, fintech companies offer unsecured loans that can be used to cover personal healthcare expenses.
These loans are mostly unsecured in nature, which means there is no need of any collateral while availing them. While the lender judges the ability of the borrower based on his income and credit history. The lender also sets a qualifying criterion based on age, residential and employment status and minimum salary requirements.
Though, medical loans come with their own advantages like instant approvals, lesser documentation work and no guarantee needed, there are a lot of disadvantages that are attached. As it is an unsecured loan which needs no guarantee stringent eligibility criteria which makes it difficult for few applicants to avail the loan. These loans also come with interest rates that makes loan costlier option for healthcare funding. Healthcare providers may also charge big for the future treatments which the patient may not will to take. These increases the loan amount for the applicant and may end up in higher debts for which the prospective borrower is not ready.
There are a few firms offering medical loan as a part of their other services like,
- Arogya Finance
- Credihealth
- Incred
- Qbera
- RupeeCircle
- HealthFin
- MoneyTap (Medical Loan)
- EarlySalary
Apart from them, below are a few well-known companies in India that have added healthcare finance to their list of pre-existing services.
- Bajaj Finserv’s “Personal loan for Medical Emergency”
- Fullerton India’s “Personal Loan for Medical Emergency”
- HDFC Bank’s “Personal Loan for Medical Need”
- Indiabulls Dhani’s “Medical Loan”
- Tata Capital’s “Medical Loan”
Prof. Smithashree C R
Assistant Professor,
DSCE-MBA
