Table of Contents
01   Digital Health Webinar Alert – ‘Bringing the Hospital to the Customer
02   The Insurance Monthly Roundup
03   The Top 7 in New Insurance Product Innovations
04   Virtualizing Insurer Customer Service Operations
05   The Technology ‘Upgrade Burden’ for Insurers

Digital Health Webinar – ‘Bringing the Hospital to the Customer’

The Pandemic is accelerating Digital Healthcare Innovation to an all-time high. Healthcare organizations must address the challenges with a ‘disconnected’ digital health strategy and the steps needed to build the right approach. Mantra Labs will be hosting a free webinar on ‘Digital Health Beyond COVID-19: Bringing the Hospital to the Customer’ where our CEO, Parag Sharma will break down those steps and discuss our Mantra for building a Better Healthcare Normal.

Join the Mantra Labs Webinar on Sep 23rd and get insights on: 

1. Deep dive into changing patient behaviour 
2. New and existing data streams: Benefits of patient-generated data
3. Optimizing Digital Health ‘Experiences’ & ‘Operations’ for Home
4. Building Impactful Virtual Care & mHealth applications
5. How to determine KPIs for successful Digital Healthcare Transformation
6. Fireside chat w/Parag Sharma (AI Thought Leader & CEO of Mantra Labs)

Date 23rd September ‘20,
Time: 12:30 PM IST | 03:00 PM SGT | 11:00 AM GST

Save your spot for the webinar.

The Insurance Monthly Roundup

A quick roundup of the month’s insurance and insurtech news.

(India)

1. Video KYC, Indian Insurers can ease the compliance process by using video-based identification to vet customer credentials for new onboardings. It has the  near-term potential to bring down complete KYC costs by 90%.
2. There’ve been 500 New Insurance Products in India over the last 20 years, of which 130 new health products (since the Pandemic began) has pushed the segment past motor to be the largest segment for general insurers.
3. Under the latest Wellness & Preventive features, Insurers can offer discount coupons and redeemable vouchers to policyholders for obtaining health supplements, memberships of yoga centres, sports clubs, gyms and fitness centres — this will improve public access to affordable add-on health covers.

(Global)

1. BIMA, a startup offering micro-health & life policies has raised $30M for enhancing its digital-first health services. BIMA has clocked 2 million tele-doctor consultations, growing its customer base by 11 million in the last two years. They’re active in 10 countries — Ghana, Tanzania and Senegal in Africa; and Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines & Sri Lanka across Asia.
2. Insurance Pricing in Asia for the second quarter of 2020 has increased 9%, year-over-year, while Property insurance pricing rose 12% in the region. Continental Europe experienced a 15% average increase in overall composite insurance pricing compared to 18% for the US market.
3. Chicago-based insurtech startup ‘Kin’ raised $35M in a series B round. Kin sells insurance directly to homeowners. Their platform allows it to make underwriting decisions quickly based on data from satellite images, public records and other sources. 

Delivering Superior Customer Experiences over Video.
Download Report, here.

Top 7 New Insurance Product Innovations

Since the Pandemic began, traditional insurance protection and cover products have evolved to meet new customer demands. Here are some of the major features observed in recently launched products:

1. Products, including indemnity health plans, targeting COVID-19 and other pandemics 
2. Insurance products with a dynamic premium component, payable only in case of pandemics or global emergencies 
3. Simple insurance products, pre-underwritten and with fixed prices, that can be sold and serviced directly through remote channels
4. Policies for gig workers that are neither covered by their employers nor by their existing plans 
5. New insurance policies to meet the needs of small and medium enterprises, offering a basic level of financial support 
6. Use-based insurance products, with “pay as you use” premiums 
7. Remote assessment and real-time settlement for auto, property, and accident claims

Modernizing a ‘Digital-Only’ Path for Insurance

A few areas that are critical for modernizing insurance companies are:

1. Remote onboarding, underwriting, claims settlement, and policy servicing
2. Personalized customer communication and proactive customer support
3. Customer-friendly products, pricing, and payment terms
4. Integrated network of brokers and field agents
5. Online distribution channels in lieu of face-to-face customer interactions
6. Telemedical processes for prospective life and health insurance buyers
7. e-KYC and video KYC processes for touchless, paperless onboarding
8. Redefined parameters for risk profiling and rating
9. Gap assessment and market analysis for product redesign
10. Faster go-to-market to roll out new products

The State of AI Chatbots in Insurance

Read the full report

Virtualizing Insurance Customer Service Operations

Since March 2020, Customer inquiries have spiked dramatically by nearly 48% across all business sectors. Help centers are taming the spike in tickets by empowering customers to find quick answers. During the same time frame, there has been a global increase in digital channels being used to contact customer service, with WhatsApp up 148%, texting up 26% and direct messaging over Facebook and Twitter up by 21%. These shifts reinforce the need for insurance companies to virtualize their customer service and meet customers on increasingly diverse channels.  

Among other fast growing concerns, consumers are now actively looking towards securing superior service levels and premium digital customer experiences but at reduced costs.

To combat disengagement, conversational experiences will be the key to providing proactive and friendly risk advice for consumers navigating the long recovery phase ahead. AI in Insurance will value at $36B by 2026. Chatbots will occupy 40% of overall deployment, predominantly within customer servicing roles. They are expected to be widely used in claims settlement within APAC, while in more developed markets it is evenly split between pre- and post-purchase transactions.

Why are private general insurers faring better with Digital?

1. Multi-channel (bordering on omni-channel) distribution models 
2. Customer experiences are improving because of better AI & digital strategy
3. Geographical expansion (Tier 3 & 4 cities)
4. Efficient sourcing of business via multiple channels is lowering the commission expense ratio

Reimagining Medical Diagnosis with Chatbots.
Read our latest blog, here.

The Technology ‘Upgrade Burden’ For Insurers

Many insurance enterprises, even at the global scale, are running layers of outdated technology with too many highly skilled back-office teams mired in “just keeping the lights on”. This often results in more frequent system downtime and a lack of interoperability that makes other inefficiencies almost unavoidable.

The Challenge with ‘Legacy Technology Layers’
A recent study done by Duck Creek, surveying 100 senior insurance executives reveals:

1. Majority of insurers characterise their IT infrastructure as multiple legacy systems operating across a host of different IT vendors, and often falling behind on upgrades.
2. The cost of performing an enterprise-wide upgrade of one version of a system to the latest version is nearly $1.2 million, according to 20% of those surveyed.
3. 90% of insurers agreed that out-of-date IT systems create inefficiencies and costs that their customers (insured) have to ultimately pay for.
4. Over two thirds of insurers were not confident in their current IT systems ability to support future growth strategies.

It’s clear the eradication of the upgrade burden would constitute one of the biggest steps forward in insurance operations. Upgrades are holding insurers back from innovating. In contrast, software as a service (SaaS) enables faster upgrades that provide insurers with the latest features and functionality and provides greater speed and agility to meet evolving customer needs.

Read Raconteur’s Future of Insurance report, here.