Why digital health underwriting will break new ground
Insurers are constantly seeking ways to develop innovative solutions to reduce costs, improve productivity, and enhance customer experience. In Asia, a lot of the focus has been on implementing automated underwriting engines to improve straight through processing (STP) rates. However, these improvements only address what we term as first level evidence of disclosures and applications. We are convinced that automated underwriting of second level medical evidence (for example assessment of medical evidence or health check results) will be the future.
Changing customer demands and rapid digitalisation in the healthcare sector are creating new pressures, and possibilities, for the insurance industry. A recent Swiss Re survey1 points to Asia Pacific (APAC) consumers’ growing preference for digital avenues to research, purchase and manage their insurance policies.
At the same time, digitalisation has driven massive accumulation of health data. In the United States, the government started driving the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) as early as in 2008. As a result of this push, EHR adoption grew from 8% in 2008 to 84% in 20152. In the last three years, we are also seeing increasing number of life insurers accessing EHR data in their underwriting process.
Today, APAC is fastest-growing market globally for EHR3. Pioneers like Australia and Singapore have already established national EHR systems, while governments in India and Japan are actively pushing for widespread adoption.4 Unfortunately, leveraging the full power of EHR isn’t quick and easy.
Manual underwriting of medical and health check-up reports (sometimes hand-curated records) remains a long-standing industry pain-point. As business grows, insurers are faced with the challenges of coping with increasing volume while maintaining a fast turnaround time, as well as ensuring quality and consistency of underwriting decisions.
To address this operational challenge, Swiss Re launched an innovative Digital Health Underwriting (DHU) solution. DHU is a SaaS-based solution that enables intelligent STP of health data (including medical examination report, lab reports, ECG and other health checks/ screenings) from disparate sources. Built on Swiss Re's Life Guide, the longstanding industry benchmark for evidence-based risk assessment, DHU helps insurers achieve a more efficient way to conduct underwriting assessment.
Easing the data burden for better outcomes
DHU automates the underwriting of first and second level medical evidence, allowing insurers to obtain precise, accurate underwriting assessment results within seconds. Results can be further filtered and sorted according to the underwriter’s needs for rapid review. DHU is built with the same technology underlying Swiss Re’s trusted Magnum underwriting technology platform and the underwriting rules and philosophy based on Swiss Re's Life Guide. DHU removes inefficiencies, human errors and biases commonly associated with standard underwriting processes, which often involve manual reviews of health information for abnormalities as well as manual cross-checking between Life Guide and the underwriting system.
Swiss Re's DHU system is modular and easily integrated with other aspects of the Magnum platform, or other in-house platforms, to create a one-stop digital underwriting solution. Its ability to provide instantaneous and round-the-clock underwriting assessment will help insurers' meet consumer's call for a responsive, full-cycle digital experience. This is why we see DHU as the key to providing digitally enabled services at speed and scale.
Advanced technologies have been a key driver of new insurance products and solutions5, and the common prerequisite underlying this entire ecosystem is the availability of standardised, high-quality data. We believe the combination of DHU and the ongoing digitalisation of health systems will help insurers make the most of APAC’s burgeoning health data resources.
Leveraging data and automation will help the industry keep pace with the region’s growth, and by paving the way for new product development, rapid delivery and customer engagement, build the health and resilience of societies across APAC. We encourage clients to explore integrating DHU into their processes, and stand ready to support them as they enter an exciting new stage in the underwriting practice.
Get in touch with us if you're interested to find out more about DHU and how we can support you in enhancing your customer's journey.
Sources:
1 APAC - Covid 19 consumer survey 2021
2 Ag-ai.nl - Underwriting with digital health data
3 Marketwatch.com - Analysis forecast
4 Commonwealthfund.org - Electronic health records
5 Mckinsey.com - How top tech trends will transform insurance