Allianz Care reports a 235-per-cent increase in demand for international health insurance
The company has also witnessed a significant increase in the demand for digital services and health and wellbeing advice
Allianz Partner’s international health brand Allianz Care has seen a massive demand for its international health insurance policies since Covid-19 began. In fact, while year-on-year sales of its private individual/family policies have doubled in Singapore and are up by 65 per cent in the UAE, in Germany they are up a whopping 235 per cent. Elsewhere, the policy sales are up 62 per cent in Italy, 57 per cent in France and 48 per cent in Spain.
The company has also reported a 257-per-cent increase in calls made to Allianz Care’s 24/7 medical advice line, which Allianz Care enhanced by adding a Covid-19 digital symptom checker to the service. And this has already been used by more than 46,000 customers to date, Allianz Care reports.
Commenting on the scale of the demand for its services, Paula Covey, Chief Marketing Officer for International Health, noted that the global emergency being experienced as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought with it increased concern stemming from the emotional and financial impact of the situation. “It wasn’t a surprise that there’d be an increase in demand for support services and advice – whether through our EAP, 24/7 helpline, webinars or the website. However, the scale of the demand did take us somewhat by surprise,” she said.
She noted that Allianz was particularly pleased with the strong levels of participation and engagement in the webinars hosted on the BrightTALK platform, which saw almost 3,000 insured members attend a webinar hosted by Dr Ulrike Sucher on recommended steps members could take to protect themselves from Covid-19.
Covey added: “In response to the situations our customers are finding themselves in, through no fault of their own, we’ve temporarily changed some of the terms of our policies. We want to support people who are stuck outside their normal region of cover due to global travel restrictions. So, our cover for medical emergencies outside the normal region of cover has been temporarily extended from six weeks to 21 weeks.
“When we say we care about our customers, emergency situations like this are where we really get a chance to prove that. It’s not an empty promise. We have to be there for our customers and from a business continuity point of view, we were already set-up for staff to work from home. So, this has been a seamless transition and it’s very much business as usual.”