The Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme: Who is it for and what do they get?

 

The insurance scheme – which was given an allocation of RM13.4 million to set up – will be run through the eKasih system under the Malaysian Welfare Department. — Picture by Farhan Najib

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KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 ― Last week, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that Putrajaya was finalising details of the Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme which is aimed at providing social protection to 268,000 families in the B40 community.

(B40 refers to the bottom 40 per cent of the income groups in Malaysia.)

The insurance scheme – which was given an allocation of RM13.4 million to set up – will be run through the eKasih system under the Malaysian Welfare Department.

This is on top of the free insurance protection by Pru-Takaful BSN where the heads of B40 households are given RM30,000 coverage.

According to the eKasih database, there are over 550,000 people who are classified as poor ― and of that number, 262,000 are categorised as hardcore poor, with an average monthly income of only RM1,169.

So the question is, how does this insurance scheme work?

How do I qualify for the scheme?

As mentioned above, the Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme will be channelled through the eKasih system, so you must be registered with the system first.

For those who are unaware, eKasih is a database system that was developed to assist the government to better plan, implement and monitor poverty eradication programmes at the national level, and thus, improve the effectiveness of such programmes.

It was created in 2007 and was developed in-house by the Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) under the Prime Minister’s Department, and was designed to prevent duplication of efforts, redundancies, leakages and mismatch in the type of aid given to the recipients ― as prior to this, ministries managed their own poverty aid databases.

How does it work?

How the scheme works is very simple.

Heads of households from poor communities who are registered in the eKasih system only need to pay a premium of RM50 a year, and in exchange, should that said person die or become seriously ill, the family would be covered.

Breaking it down, should the breadwinner of the family die of natural causes or become permanently disabled, RM10,000 would be given to the family.

If said breadwinner were to die in an accident, the compensation would be doubled to RM20,000.

Other programmes?

When announcing the Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme, the prime minister also announced that he was committed to improving the living standards of B40 families in the agrofood agricultural community.

Through the programme, Ismail Sabri said that many types of assistance will be provided to 39,171 recipients from this community, with an allocation of RM109.7 million.

One thousand three hundred padi farmers also benefited from the Large-Scale SMART Padi Field (SMART SBB) programme for the purpose of increasing the productivity of padi cultivation. - malaymail