How Tech is Changing Face of Health Insurance
The speed of innovation and products on offer at life and health insurers is rapid, and in a diverse global market, the picture is different across jurisdictions.
Will Wood is Director of Life and Health at Instanda, the digital insurance solution that enables carriers, brokers and managing general agents (MGSa) to design, build and launch insurance products. Here, Wood discusses the latest on health insurance in North America, the UK, Europe and Africa, and he looks at how technology is driving things forward.
How is life & health insurance evolving in North America?
In North America, there has been some significant movement in the insurance space when it comes to eApp capability. Consumers are getting better digital experiences on the front end, and new players have emerged. But there is still a lot of work to do to digitise the policy administration layer to drive out operational inefficiencies and remove paper processing.
One of the struggles this creates is where eApp capability has been integrated into existing policy administration platforms, there is inevitably work to do to re-integrate into a new platform undoing the previous work.
The companies getting ahead of the curve here are being smart and using technology platforms that do the eApp as well as the policy administration layer.
How do things differ in the UK?
In the UK, the life and health market is moving. The individual life market has been stuck for a while on systems that started to get bedded in 15-20 years ago, and the itch to move again is becoming apparent.
Thinking of the new consumer duty regulation that will be in place for insurers from 31 July 2023, making changes to meet new requirements is challenging and can be costly. Those more daring in the market are starting to use wearable devices as a way to differentiate but, getting this right is not simple.
The proposition is complex and usually involves an ecosystem approach to make it work, with insuretech that can plug and play. This will be an area that continues to emerge and will be more of the norm in the coming years but, insurers need to be working with the right tech now to benefit from this in the future.
The Health market has a flood of new technology from lots of different parts of the value chain. This market has probably seen some of the biggest movement when looking at platform replacements across private medical insurance and cash plans.
I think a lot of this has to do with COVID, which has placed pressure on the NHS, and there is a great deal of demand for these products, But private medical insurance can be too expensive for some, and cash plans don’t always have all of the benefits people are looking for.
This inevitably means new propositions. EquipsMe was ahead of the curve here and is providing something a bit different to traditional products.
New and existing business platforms that can provide operational efficiencies and the ability to provide distribution and user portals will continue to become more important. With claims, no-code platforms such as 360Globalnet will digitally transform insurers in the same way Instanda does.
How is life & health insurance evolving in North America?
In North America, there has been some significant movement in the insurance space when it comes to eApp capability. Consumers are getting better digital experiences on the front end, and new players have emerged. But there is still a lot of work to do to digitise the policy administration layer to drive out operational inefficiencies and remove paper processing.
One of the struggles this creates is where eApp capability has been integrated into existing policy administration platforms, there is inevitably work to do to re-integrate into a new platform undoing the previous work.
The companies getting ahead of the curve here are being smart and using technology platforms that do the eApp as well as the policy administration layer.
How do things differ in the UK?
In the UK, the life and health market is moving. The individual life market has been stuck for a while on systems that started to get bedded in 15-20 years ago, and the itch to move again is becoming apparent.
Thinking of the new consumer duty regulation that will be in place for insurers from 31 July 2023, making changes to meet new requirements is challenging and can be costly. Those more daring in the market are starting to use wearable devices as a way to differentiate but, getting this right is not simple.
The proposition is complex and usually involves an ecosystem approach to make it work, with insuretech that can plug and play. This will be an area that continues to emerge and will be more of the norm in the coming years but, insurers need to be working with the right tech now to benefit from this in the future.
The Health market has a flood of new technology from lots of different parts of the value chain. This market has probably seen some of the biggest movement when looking at platform replacements across private medical insurance and cash plans.
I think a lot of this has to do with COVID, which has placed pressure on the NHS, and there is a great deal of demand for these products, But private medical insurance can be too expensive for some, and cash plans don’t always have all of the benefits people are looking for.
This inevitably means new propositions. EquipsMe was ahead of the curve here and is providing something a bit different to traditional products.
New and existing business platforms that can provide operational efficiencies and the ability to provide distribution and user portals will continue to become more important. With claims, no-code platforms such as 360Globalnet will digitally transform insurers in the same way Instanda does.
How is technology helping insurers worldwide?
Being able to quickly reprice in the market is key. Changing price points can be a time-consuming process, but having technology that can work with complex actuarial databases – which can then plug into new technology platforms – creates great flexibility. Optalitix is a company in this space and doing really well.
Also, medical underwriting is a core conversation across any of the global markets. Being able to plug and play into a tech platform that has a comprehensive rules engine is a great way of reducing operational costs and making customer journeys more seamless.
I’d use UnderwriteMe as an example of a company pushing forward here and moving into different geographies.
Elsewhere, when it comes to data analytics, AI, and understanding your customer base and using this to inform the next best actions then companies like Atidot are doing just this.
Yarowa, for example, is making it easier for customers to get to the right medical professional by using technology to understand what customers want, and then rapidly recommending the medical professional best placed to meet their needs.
How is AI driving technological innovation?
I expect over the coming years we will see technology that quickly reads across multiple sources of information to inform customers on the type of policy to take out that best meets their needs. Robo-advisers have been talked about for some time but have never really made it.
This could be a stimulus for the rise of these tools. When it comes to claims, I expect claims assessment will become a quality-checking exercise because gen AI will be able to look at the medical history of a claimant, consider the policy history information and summarise a recommendation based on the information. Let’s see what happens.
To read the full story in the magazine click HERE
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