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Why buy health insurance from a broker and not go direct ?

For no extra cost whatsoever, buying your health insurance through a properly licensed broker gives you more robust and secure coverage, dedicated after-sales service, and makes certain you will be sold the package which suits you best, not the package which best suits the insurer’s sales representative.

Expat health insurance in China is not always particularly straightforward. Inevitably those with years of experience and in-depth understanding of the insurance picture will be able to offer insight and guidance for your benefit, and enable you to get a better deal. However, such knowledge all too often is used to confuse and bamboozle consumers. After listening to endless jargon from an insurer or agent, you may be overwhelmed with a sense of tedium and lose the will to keep asking for the constant string of obscure acronyms you hear to be explained to you. In these circumstances, it’s very easy to be steered towards certain products which the insurer wants to sell even if they aren’t the right fit for you.

The above scenario is very common in China where many so-called insurance brokers are actually agents who are paid to work with specific insurers. Such kind of salespersons may spin a great line about a particular health package or coverage, but the chances are it’s suiting them to sell it more than it’s suiting you to buy it. After all, there are hundreds of different options out there.

Buying health insurance through a broker

In stark contrast, a reliable and trustworthy insurance broker (as opposed to an insurance agent) uses their knowledge to empower you and help you find the best package. China Expat Health is a completely independent broker. We earn commissions from insurers for our work. There is no added cost to you – if you bought directly from the insurer, the price would be exactly the same. In our case, we are merely picking up a commission which would have otherwise gone to the insurer’s own sales team. Looked at from this perspective, buying your health cover through a broker offers everything an insurer offers, plus an independent service and dedicated after-sales service. Two teams in your corner rather than one.

If you were to browse online at various packages available on the big insurers’ websites, you will most likely find quite a few of them attractive. But once you zero-in on your choice and start talking to the insurer, your options become more limited. The insurer will listen to your needs, but of course they will only offer you their own products. But there may be other products out there which are more suitable for you which you won’t hear about from them. A independent broker will give you impartial advice about a whole range of packages available all over the market, and may even be able to understand your insurance needs better than you do yourself and find something which gives you the perfect cover. At every step, the broker is working for you, not the insurer. So in this regard a good broker will look to develop long-term relationships with a client, as healthcare is something we need to take care of for all of our lives.

Another advantage of having an independent broker scouring the market for you is that they can find new and innovative packages from lesser-known insurers which you may not have heard of, or may not have the confidence to try. Good insurance doesn’t necessarily have to come from big brand insurers – better and often more competitively-priced deals are out there from smaller players – and China Expat Health knows who can be relied on and who cannot – you can place all of our confidence in us and save yourself endless hassles and worries.

Will my insurance cover me if I’m overseas? Will I be covered for serious diseases? What happens if I have an accident? Will my insurer pay out? Is my insurer reputable? Will they try to wriggle out of paying for a claim? There are so many aspects of insurance which can cast doubt in our minds, but hiring a trusted health insurance expert, in the same of a broker, can make your life much easier at absolutely no extra cost whatsoever. As they say, it’s a no-brainer.

After-sales service is a serious consideration. Insurers will do a great job of assuring you that everything will be taken care of and explaining how you will be covered. But when you actually need to use the insurance you have paid hard earned money for, things may not quite work out like that. What was sold to you as a solid and straightforward service may turn out to be complicated and troublesome. You may have been mis-sold a package and find that you weren’t covered for something you thought you would have been covered fr. By going through a broker, the chances of this happening are greatly reduced. But if it does, or if there is any other quibble over details of the coverage, a broker fights on your side to make sure you get the coverage you paid for. Brokers can also make enquiries and deal with less-than-efficient insurer customer service departments when necessary.

Getting the right health insurance and using it effectively is a big challenge at the best of times. But making this happen in a foreign country like China is an even tougher task for all sorts of reasons. Given the extra layers of complexity expats face in day-to-day life in China, messing around with health cover is something you can ill afford and going through a broker can remove this headache from your life in China. And of course having someone on the ground in China who has deep knowledge not only of health insurance but of how to use health care services in China is invaluable. Many of China Expat Health’s staff are long-term China residents with rich personal experience of using health care facilities in China.

We’ve been through the same dramas and conundrums of living in China – let us be on your side and become your broker and personal China health care concierge by contacting us for a quote and free consultation today.