Publish the exclusions first
Every exclusion sits on a public page before anyone pays a rupee. If we would be embarrassed to show you a clause up front, it doesn't belong in the wording.
Built by people who got tired of declining claims
Unesco Trust was started in Mumbai in 2009 by four actuaries who had spent a decade inside large Indian insurers, watching perfectly honest claims fail on a room-rent cap, a disease-wise sub-limit, or a waiting period nobody had explained.
Why we exist
The gap between the brochure and the hospital desk
In India the problem is rarely that people are uninsured. It is that they are insured badly — a ₹3 lakh sum insured with a 1% room-rent cap, a 20% co-pay after 60, and a three-year wait on the diabetes they declared honestly on the form.
None of that is fraud. It is all disclosed, somewhere, in a wording handed over after the premium is paid. But it means the cover collapses at precisely the moment it is needed, and the family discovers the terms of their policy in a hospital corridor at 2am.
So we built the opposite. Sub-limits removed rather than reduced. Waiting periods cut to the shortest the numbers can carry, not the longest the regulator allows. The claims standard written into Schedule C as a contractual term with a penalty attached. And the exclusion list published on a page you can read before you buy.
Seventeen years on, that is still the whole strategy. We are not the cheapest insurer in India and we have never tried to be. We intend to be the one whose policy still means what you thought it meant on the day you need it.
By the numbers
2009
Founded in Mumbai
12 lakh
Members protected
₹4,800 cr
Claims paid
640+
Districts served
14,200+
Cashless hospitals
1,900+
Employees, no agents
Seventeen years
What we changed, and when
-
2009
Four actuaries and a rented office in Malad
Founded in Mumbai on a single premise: that an insurer's product is its claims process, and everything before that is administration.
-
2012
IRDAI registration granted
Registration No. 187. The first health and motor policies were issued across Maharashtra and Gujarat, direct to members with no agent in between.
-
2015
Room-rent caps and co-payment abolished
Removed from the entire health book at every age band, including above 60 — at the time, the only Indian insurer to do so without a premium loading.
-
2018
The 48-hour guarantee became contractual
Moved out of the marketing copy and into Schedule C of every policy, with an automatic ₹2,500 credit if we miss it. We have paid that credit 1,142 times since.
-
2021
Bharat Griha Raksha adopted at launch
Took the IRDAI's standardised home wording on day one so cover could be compared line for line, then extended it for monsoon, flood and jewellery kept at home.
-
2023
Pre-existing wait cut from 36 months to 12
Applied retrospectively to every existing member rather than only to new business. The no-claim bonus was raised to 25% a year, capping at 200%.
-
2026
12 lakh members, 640+ districts
₹4,800 crore of claims paid, a 99.2% settlement ratio, and a solvency ratio of 2.41× against the 1.50× the regulator requires.
How we operate
Six rules we don't bend
Put a penalty on our own promise
A service standard with no consequence is a slogan. Ours costs us ₹2,500 every time we miss it, credited automatically without you asking.
One name, not a queue
Every member gets a named advisor and every claim a named assessor, reachable on WhatsApp. Nobody at Unesco Trust is paid a commission on a sale.
Automate the triage, never the decision
Software routes, scores and prices. A licensed human decides every claim above ₹25,000, and signs their name to the reasoning.
Never re-rate someone for claiming
Health premiums move with age band and medical inflation only. Motor no-claim bonus survives one claim a year. Claiming is the point of the product.
Hold more capital than required
We run a solvency ratio of 2.41× against the IRDAI minimum of 1.50×, and cede a third of the book to GIC Re and five international reinsurers.
Leadership
The people whose names are on it
Every one of them spent years inside large Indian insurers first. That is not a coincidence — it is the hiring criterion.
Ananya Deshpande
Chief Executive & Co-founder
Twenty-two years as a pricing actuary before founding Unesco Trust. Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of India.
Dr. Rajiv Menon
Chief Actuary & Co-founder
Built the reserving model that lets us carry a 12-month pre-existing wait profitably. FIAI, and a PhD in stochastic reserving.
Fatima Sheikh
Head of Claims
Runs the 48-hour standard and the 620-strong assessor team. Previously headed health claims at a top-five private insurer.
Neha Kulkarni
Chief Underwriting Officer
Owns the decision to write no medical test below ₹1 crore of term cover, and the data that makes it defensible.
Vikram Iyer
General Counsel & Grievance Officer
Rewrote every policy wording into plain English and Hindi. He is also the person your complaint reaches before the Ombudsman does.
Arjun Rao
Chief Technology Officer
Built the WhatsApp claims intake and the 20-minute cashless pre-authorisation engine. Previously led engineering at a UPI payments company.
Financial standing
Boring, on purpose
An insurance promise is only as good as the balance sheet behind it. Ours is deliberately over-capitalised and conservatively invested, because the alternative is a company that is excellent at claims right up until it isn't.
- Solvency ratio 2.41× against the IRDAI minimum of 1.50×
- CRISIL AAA (Stable) — the highest domestic credit rating available
- ₹4,800 crore of claims paid since inception, at a 99.2% settlement ratio
- A third of the book reinsured with GIC Re and five international reinsurers
- 68% of investments in G-secs and AAA-rated debt, with no unlisted equity
- Public disclosures filed quarterly with IRDAI, and mirrored on this site
Where we operate
Licensed nationally by IRDAI and servicing 640+ districts across all 28 states and 8 union territories. Cashless is available at 14,200+ network hospitals and 7,800 garages.
Our registered and head office is in Mumbai, with claims, underwriting and member support hubs in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Pune. Every one of them is staffed by our own employees — nothing is outsourced, and nothing is offshore.
Come and check
Read the wording before you buy
Ask us for the full policy wording, the exclusion list and last year's claims data. We'll send all three before asking you for anything.