Weekly Insurance Round-up Tuesday, February 1, 2022

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✴️ Demand for individual health insurance grows as Covid-19 cases rise ⬆

✴️ Cashless claim rejections for mild Covid-19 cases increase during the third wave 😥

✴️ 84% of Indian Millenials have a strategy for wealth management: Study 🤑

✴️ Mahindra Insurance Brokers and TATA 1mg come together to provide wellness solutions 🤝

✴️ Artivatic introduces MiO, an insurance sales and distribution platform 🆕

• As per the latest trend analysis study done by Digit Insurance, the surge in Covid-19 cases has led to a rise in demand for individual health insurance.
• The study compared data between 1st November to 31st December in 2021 with the same period in 2020. The findings of the study show that - 
  • Demand for retail health policies grew by 98% and this growth was seen in all health insurance products like Digit Health Care Plus, Digit Arogya Sanjeevani, and Digit Corona Kavach.
  • Health insurance demand grew two times more than the previous year.
  • The number of people covered under group health insurance increased by 170%. 
  • The average sum insured across products decreased by 17% - this indicates that people are buying health insurance but with a low sum insured.
  • In 2021, demand for health insurance in cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, and New Delhi grew by 104.4%. Demand in small cities like Nashik, Rajkot, and Vadodara rose by 95% and a large share of this demand came from Gurugram, Thane, and Vadodara.

Source: LiveMint

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• Insurance companies are rejecting cashless claims of patients with mild Covid-19 infection. And the reasons behind the rejection of claims this time are different from the first and the second wave of Covid-19.
• Mostly, the claims being rejected are of patients with mild Covid-19 symptoms who could get treatment at home and of those who underwent the monoclonal antibody cocktail therapy. 
• There have been allegations that insurers are denying claims of even those patients who are getting admitted for other ailments but test positive for Covid-19 during the pre-admission medical screening.
• The current surge in the Covid-19 cases is majorly due to the Omicron variant, which is highly contagious. The fear of the virus spreading to other family members is making people get admitted to hospitals. Hospital officials believe this is a social problem that the insurers are overlooking.

Source: My Kolkata

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• According to a study conducted by CASHe, an AI-driven financial wellness platform, 84% of Indian millennials have a wealth management strategy to cope with the future consequences in the post-pandemic world.
• The study was conducted with a sample size of 30,000 customers on CASHe’s platform. Over 65% of the respondents were from metro cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune, and Chennai and the remaining 35% were from tier 2 and tier 3 towns.
• As per the study, Covid-19 has led to a drastic change in the behavior of millennials across various topics like health, travel, shopping, savings, and credit appetite. 
• The study shows that financial awareness among millennials is growing and they are equally focused on savings, investments, and insurance. While over 50% of the respondents have increased their savings, nearly 13% are into more extensive investment programs.
• There has also been a change in shopping habits, as 38% of respondents have shifted permanently to shopping online for a better wealth management strategy, while 45% preferred to go for a hybrid model of shopping depending on their choice of items.
• The pandemic has created an awareness of the importance of insurance and as per the study, nearly 35% of the respondents have purchased health as well as life insurance plans.
• Besides investing in insurance, millennials have also chosen a healthier lifestyle as more than 71% of them have grown more health-conscious during the pandemic, and keeping in mind both financial and health aspects, 54% of the respondents now prefer eating homemade healthy food.

Source: Outlook

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• On 27th January 2022, Mahindra Insurance Brokers announced their partnership with Tata 1mg to provide corporates with a holistic wellness solution. 
• The tie-up aims to offer customized health solutions for the well-being of corporate employees and their families. They will customize packages that will address the needs of the corporates, the employees, and their families. 
• The packages will be available on Tata 1mg’s mobile application and include benefits such as 24X7 tele-doctor access, one-to-one counseling support, home sample collection, discounts on pharmacy, health check-ups, medical devices, personal care, supplements, etc.
• Tata 1mg is a healthcare platform that provides services including e-pharmacy, diagnostics, e-consultation, and health content. Mahindra Insurance Brokers is a subsidiary of Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services.

Source: LiveMint

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• Artivatic, an insuretech firm, launched MiO - an integrated platform for sales, marketing, agent, customer, branch, communication, and lead management. 
• With this launch, Artivatic aims to provide next-generation digital sales, branch operations, and customer lead conversion solutions. 
• Mio comes in 3 varieties - 
  • MiOSales: A unique unified sales and distribution platform.
  • MiOBanca: An AI-based bancassurance sales platform.
  • MiO Broker: A sales and point of the sales platform for broker’s distribution.
• MiO is available on both mobile and web and can easily be integrated with any third party or government APIs, optical character recognition, content and communication data intelligence, automation, etc. 
• The rising demand for insurance has led to digitalization in the financial sector across the Asia-Pacific region. This transition will drive the expansion of online bancassurance and other similar financial services further. 
• Banks, insurers, and brokers need to start using advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, robotic process automation, etc. to understand the preference of customers and provide personalized solutions to them in real-time.

Source: Express Computer

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