61% of Insurance Leaders foresee more Digital Disruption in Insurance than any other commercial sector, PwC Global CEO Survey showed. Yet, the insurance companies are still not able to break free from the legacy and to embrace the digitalization process.
The Insurers must accept the fact that the Insurance World has changed and the new generation is more demanding and at the moment they are simply not satisfied with the insurance policies.
According to Oracle survey, the Gen Y Insurance Consumer face with three main challenges - they find the insurance:
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to complex,
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too intense and
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too transactional!
Hence, the insurers must change the way they serve the customers. They must accept that today’s customer is more empowered, more social, with higher expectations and seeks for an experience.
Or as Christophe Jacquet from InSites Consulting sums it up: The patient is no longer patient.
They (the patients) become partners in their health management and want to be informed about every step in the way of making their health condition better.
So, what is the future of health insurance? Here are the three takeaways from the Excellence in Health Insurance Conference that took place last week in Berlin:
Prevention
Health insurance now becomes more about prevention. Prevention is more important than ever. According to Generali in very near future, it will be expected, along with the medical bill, patients to get predictive analysis about what the current health condition will cause to them in future.
The percentage of care delivered at home or virtually will increase. Accordingly, the costs should decrease. Actually, this proven to be a fact for Ribera Salud in Spain. Their health portal reportedly decreased the average cost for DRG (Diagnosis-related grouping) by 30% and helped the hospital to save 1 million euros at every 1.1000 admissions.
Security
Insurers must simplify access to all data; discover and predict fast, and govern and secure all data! With the digitalization, the security must become better and more assuring. The data breaching has risen in the past years and this is something that insurers must take in consideration. According to Allianz the breaches caused by either hacking or malware nearly doubled in relative frequency over the past year: 18% in 2014 to 21% in 2015. More importantly, the breaches involving third-party vendors more than tripled: 6% in 2014 to 18% in 2015. These breaches can hinder the reputation of the company that can ultimately lead to losing your customers.
With the security comes compliance as well. According to Health Insurance Instantly, compliance is here to stay and laws will push for that. Some business will be lost if not 100% compliant as clients’ demand for compliance will rise.
Apps/Wearables and Customer Engagement
According to Generali, the apps have very short life. Therefore it is important to provide active engagement with patients. Otherwise, the tools will fail.
The importance of engagement also was elaborated by Andrea Silvelo from Neosurance Srl Italy. According to him, the insurers must dedicate themselves more in engaging the patients more by proposing healthy behaviors. At the end of the day, as he put it, the insurance is sold, not bought.
“Insurers are becoming “player” of the game instead of simple “payers”. That means take care of the health customer journey, proposing healthy behaviors with a gamification approach to engaging customers. An engaged individual is a healthy client so a better client!”
In conclusion, we will quote Christophe from InSites Consulting. As he put it, the future of healthcare and health insurance should be more:
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popular,
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predictive,
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persuasive,
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preventive,
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participative,
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personalized,
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patient-centric,
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pragmatic and
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omnipresent.
We have passed the era of healthcare, now it’s time for health management.
