Meeting the evolving needs of expats

Those in the global health insurance industry know 'traditional expat’ anymore hose in the global health insurance industry know there’s no such thing as a ‘traditional expat’ anymore. Life abroad is now broadly appealing not only to those on three-year work assignments, but at many stages of life – students, retirees, digital nomads, and even local nationals who are looking to purchase international benefits for stays made possible by long-term visas.

For this crowd, a one-size-fits-all approach to health insurance is no longer acceptable. They want more modular plans that can meet a variety of needs, at a price-point that works for them. The industry is challenged to move fast to enable those experiences, keep premium costs low in a complex macroeconomic environment, and cut through lots of technology hype to create real and lasting value for their businesses.

How are some of the leaders in the industry approaching all of this? Flywire recently gathered leaders in a virtual roundtable discussion, including Steve Martin, Head of Broker Sales, UK and Europe at Cigna; Brendan Cerff, Head of IT at William Russell; Elliott Draga, Chief Commercial Officer at NIS, Acturis Group; and Manny Socorro, Strategic Account Director for Insurance at Flywire. The conversation uncovered three pieces of advice for those in the IPMI and global health insurance industry to consider.

Those in the global health insurance industry know there’s no such thing as a ‘traditional expat’ anymore

1. Do not automate a bad process – and definitely do not ‘AI-enable’ it.

A live poll during the event revealed that everyone is feeling the pressure to become artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled. In order to ensure that any AI-first effort does not become a solution in search of a problem, there are two important considerations. First, it is critical to determine the use case. It is still common to conflate automation and AI – and there are still many processes within the insurance industry that would benefit greatly from projects around the former.

Secondly, robust data management and data stewardship are the first step toward delivering secure, efficient, and useful experiences. It is easy to understand how problematic bad data – even, for instance, having multiple naming conventions for the same product – would be in training an AI model. Digitisation and good data management practices are the launching pad for impactful AI-enabled experiences. As one of our panellists put it, “We want AI. But let’s be real about it. Let’s get everything in place first and make sure everything is flowing in the right direction.”

2. Adopt distributed architecture.

APIs and easy connections to best-of-breed software are crucial to scaling digital customer experiences. 

Technology architecture needs to quickly and securely enable new experiences, and insurers will be integrating third-party tech to do so. Architecture needs to be interoperable and amenable to data transmission and flexible APIs.

As NIS’s Draga put it: “I think there's the ever-pressing need from our standpoint to be the enabler or to have a solution that can be the enabler, to not be the impediment to what industry wants to deliver toward consumers… because at the end of the day, today and in the future, technology is going to be the enabler for that shift in consumer demand.”

We want AI. But let’s be real about it. Let’s get everything in place first and make sure everything is flowing in the right direction

3. Remember the basics. Relationships continue to be critical to success.

Insurance is one of the most important assets people have. Remember that your customers are not necessarily looking to the industry to be an innovator, but to innovate on processes that present friction to acquiring and using insurance when they need it.

Where to start

Start with the types of ‘innovation’ that actually make a difference in the process – such as making it easy to pay the premium online, whether annually or monthly, and in their currency and payment method of choice.

Make it easy to help them fix an issue when it goes wrong – such as a stored credit card enabled for a recurring payment that has expired – to prevent policy lapses.

Insurance is one of the most important assets people have

Give them support in their local language and time zone. “Whether it's brokers, insurers, or the technology providers in the insurance ecosystem, it’s all about removing friction from the process. Flywire is focused on the collection of premium, but that concept of removing friction and making it easier for an insured to do business with the insurer permeates across the entire spectrum of the life cycle there, of the insurance purchase down to when you actually need the insurance,” Flywire’s Socorro said. The needs and demands of the world, individuals and brokers, is what helps us shape the products, as one panellist put it – and as always, broker and customer feedback is critical to iterative product improvement.