One of the fastest-growing segments in India, the country’s health insurance sector has registered a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% for the last 10 years [1]. While growing awareness among the masses regarding healthcare is one of the major catalysts behind this growth, digitisation has further given the industry a major push.
The industry, too, is leaving no stone unturned to make the most of the digitisation wave to enhance customer experience and make health insurance plans available to all. Read on to know how the industry is leveraging digitisation to boost its penetration.
Selling health insurance plans online
A primarily agent-driven industry, health insurers today are banking on the increasing penetration of the web to sell policies, particularly to millennials. A survey found about 30% of people in the age group of 25-34 years [2] buy health insurance plans online.
Buying online health insurance has its advantages. You can fill up the proposal form, upload the relevant documents, pay the premium and you’ll be done. There are no intermediaries involved, and insurers save on commissions. As a result, you get to insure your health at an affordable premium
Improve customer experience
The digitisation wave is helping health insurers improve the customer experience. Today, you can gather information about a new policy, check the status of your application or claim, and renew the plan online in a few clicks.
By integrating advanced action-oriented chatbots on websites, health insurers are elevating the customer experience to the next level. The advanced chatbots, integrated with artificial intelligence and machine learning, based on the queries decipher what you are looking for and make suggestions accordingly. Today, they can also help you do mundane tasks such as filling up the proposal form
Better underwriting
The crux of insurance, underwriting helps in better risk assessment and compute premium(s) accordingly. With rising cases of frauds in the sector, insurers have tightened their underwriting process of late. However, they face a challenge to ensure that genuine customers don’t suffer due to frauds committed by others and get adequately rewarded.
Digitalisation is helping health insurers overcome this challenge with ease. With Wearable devices are going to rule the future of your healthcare health insurers can extract crucial information about your lifestyle, which goes a long way in risk assessment and compute premium accordingly.
For instance, if you are leading a healthy life, insurers can know it through vital data such as your BMI, heart rate, sleep hours, etc. In such a scenario, when you renew your health insurance policy, the premium amount will come down.
Craft tailor-made products and be competitive
Personalisation is the new-age success mantra. Every industry is looking to craft tailor-made products, as per the needs of customers, and strike a chord with the target segment. The key data of the target audience is aiding health insurers create products suiting the needs of their customers.
For example, health insurers can better understand the diseases affecting senior citizens such as Alzheimer’s and are coming up with specific mediclaim policy for this ailment. Some insurers are even adding coverage for this disease in their existing plans. Along with personalisation, it’s important to innovate.