Consumers consider insurers main providers of wellness advice

As life expectancy increases and challenges like demographic trends, the retirement savings gap, medical inflation and a shortfall of healthcare workers grow, wellness is at the forefront of customers’ minds. The report found that 69% and 67% of customers are interested in physical and financial wellness, respectively, while 37% and 24% of policyholders rate insurers as their top potential partners for physical and financial wellness, respectively.

The report found that 83% of customers are looking for on-demand customer services, 78% for ongoing physical and financial guidance, and 74% for hyper-personalised value-added services and rewards. However, only 8% of insurers have established effective wellness-centric value propositions and built the capabilities necessary to sustain them.

The report found that insurtechs are ahead of traditional insurers in the key capabilities for hyper-personalisation, specifically artificial intelligence/machine learning (28% of insurtechs vs. 14% of insurers) and cloud (44% of insurtechs vs. 19% of insurers). Insurtechs and traditional insurers are largely aligned on product innovation. However, only 43% of insurers are effectively co-creating or innovating with strategic or ecosystem partners.

“The last two years prove that wellness needs to be a priority, and insurers need to understand how to effectively deliver wellness services,” said Samantha Chow, global life annuity and health insurance sector leader at Capgemini. “This report demonstrates the need for insurers to transform and focus on hyper-personalised services that meet individual needs of customers. This means moving to a data-driven ‘wellness-as-a-service’ model with the technological innovation that prioritises the customer. This, in turn, will enable deeper engagement and help insurers reach out to customers as and when they need it most.”

The report said that in order to meet new customer expectations about physical and financial wellness, insurers should focus on three priorities:

Insurers can help policyholders rebuild their physical wellness by accessing emergency and regular medical care, and their financial wellness by meeting current financial needs
Insurers can support policyholders to prevent future physical wellness issues by ensuring adherence to medical prescriptions, physical therapy protocols or routine wellness visits. They can prevent financial challenges by helping customers prepare for unexpected expenses or educating them about income protection products
Insurers can help policyholders improve physical wellness through ongoing health and life advice, and financial wellness by providing better financial planning options, opportunities and education

“Over the past few years, we have seen our insurer partners innovate and evolve to a prevention mindset for the benefit of all parties,” said John Berry, CEO of Qorus. “Indeed, customers engage better with insurers who genuinely care about their wellbeing. Insurers and governmental organisations see the benefits from shorter recovery times, and health issues that have been prevented, facilitated by the technological advances that allow better follow-up and support for all.”