Insuretech Connect Vegas 2022 may have wrapped up recently, but we’re too fired up to keep the details a secret! The world’s largest insurtech event draws everyone from start-ups to longstanding insurance brands, becoming the epicenter of insurance innovation for those three days the program is underway.
This year’s event theme, “The Future of Insurance is Here”, came across loud and clear in both the cutting-edge topics and the future-forward companies sponsoring the event. From the many start-ups in attendance to insurers launching innovative products and strategies, there’s much to be excited about as we look ahead to the future.
While we always come back from this event with incredible insights, we wanted to share the key highlights that point to innovative changes that will benefit insurance customers.
1. CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY = WHOLE PERSON
Holistic Health (aka. Adding Financial Wellness to Health Insurance)
Health providers, insurers and consumers alike are moving toward the concept of “holistic health”. This means going beyond what’s happening physically and seeing the “whole person” for their mental, financial and social wellbeing as well. In fact, carriers such as Prudential, Sun LIfe and MetLife are purposefully adding in financial wellness to engage and deliver relevant services/products to their end clients.
At Optimity, we’re currently looking at financial wellness and how it impacts overall wellbeing. According to our latest consumer data, 60% of respondents feel stressed by managing their finances. To address this we’re developing micro-education tools and journeys that help users develop healthier financial habits.
2. HUGE INDUSTRY ADVANCEMENTS
Wearables Data for Underwriting and Embedded Insurance Practices
Life and health insurers were at a disadvantage historically for sales and distribution, because of the complex buying process. Underwriting takes weeks or months for most policies and is cost and cumbersome.
That’s all changed with significant adoption of wearable technology by consumers. The data generated by these and other IoT devices allowed for the new singularity event to happen for the life insurance industry: live and continuous underwriting of policyholders. Several top reinsurers have published white papers on the power of physical activity data in predicting mortality more effectively than many traditional underwriting questions and even most lab metrics. [See Munich Re’s whitepaper on using wearables for insurance risk assessment, Swiss Re’s article on health and wellness engagement, and SCOR’s article on their Biological Age Model (BAM) to empower healthier living.)
This is fueling the digitization of the sales – including the underwriting experience. For insurers this means finding ways to expand the distribution of their products through partnerships with digital tech companies, as we heard in the session “Expanding Embedded Partnerships to Drive Growth Through New Distribution Channels”.
Embedded insurance – insurance that can be purchased within the commercial transaction of another product or service – has mainly been focused on the home and auto insurance market. Now, with tech-connected enablers such as Optimity, L&H carriers and MGAs are able to use wearable data to score applicants within minutes. They opened up the ability to embed the sale into new channels. This is a game changer.
Health Risk Scoring Using Wearables
Did you know that steps have now been accepted by the reinsurer community as a better predictor of mortality than any of the other traditional underwriting risk factors? There is a new frontier happening within this industry and Optimity is leveraging these new developments and specialized industry expertise to deliver a breakthrough enabler B2B solution to help close the $35 trillion protection gap.
Through our own work with health risk scoring, we see this opening new frontiers for better, cheaper and faster insurance sales. Learn more about how using Optimity Health Grade™ can make that possible.
3. PERSONALIZING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The session “Living Longer to Living Better: Tracking Devices to Predictive Analytics” featured Optimity’s CEO, Jane J. Wang and other panelists discussing a range of topics, including ways to improve customer experience. Panelists agreed on one strategy in particular – personalization.
Customers have come to expect tailored recommendations for nearly everything in their life, based on their digital data. With the use of wearables, this means there can be specific insurance products referred based on real-time insights about life phase, health status, etc.
In addition, insurers are looking to micro-education and behavioral science for driving customer engagement and adoption of healthier ways of living. The more personalized these experiences are, the more likely for customers to make changes that translate to positive impacts on the premiums they qualify for, for example.
We’ve been focused these past few years on how to make successful insurance funnels possible for life and health insurers and are seeing the evolution happening. Contact us if you’re curious about hearing more.
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