ITIC APAC 2025 | Digital integration trends

The ITIJ team have been reporting live from ITIC APAC in Hong Kong this week (June 2025) sharing the discussions that took place at the conference. Read all reports

Kim Yan Lim, Director, Kim Global Consultancy

Lim’s presentation concentrated on how tech is reshaping travel and healthcare protection. She said that technology is quietly and quickly solving the pain points when it comes to understanding insurance policies. 

She added that the pandemic accelerated demand for remote access and digital claims, andtravellers and patients now expect seamless, app-based, anytime-anywhere services, and rising healthcare costs push insurers to prioritise prevention and automation. 

Lim said smart insurance is not a future idea – it’s already reshaping what we expect. The convergence of digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), and mobile services is transforming reactive insurance into proactive protection, and “smart tech doesn’t just pay claims – it unlocks clarity. The more real-time data you have, the better you can predict needs, personalise solutions, and convert protection into profit. I call this the ‘3D shift’: from data to decisions to dollars.”

Lim said that tech-enabled insurers aren’t just offering policies; they’re nudging healthier decisions, smarter care use, and better outcomes. She spoke about three different case studies.

She asked the audience: “Are you just selling protection – or actively shaping customer behaviour? The best insurers today are data-informed, behaviourally designed, and digitally delivered.”

Lim said it’s vital to remember the 3D formula: “All successful smart insurance stories ride on this flow – using data to influence decisions that lead to measurable business value.” She said this is what smart insurance looks like and you shape the future of customer engagement and profitability.

She said tech is reshaping insurance with on-demand access, personalised plans, and operational excellence.

Lily Chen, Founder and Managing Director, Essential Benefit Solutions

Chen focused her presentation on health management programmes in insurance, and started by talking about major insurance companies.

She said major insurance providers typically offer member health management services that span the entire healthcare continuum, from prevention to treatment, delivering comprehensive support to address policyholders’ holistic health needs. 

Typical services include personal health record (PHR), priority medical access, health consultation and medical advice, and mental health services. 

She went on to talk about the challenges of integrating health management with insurance, and said that the essence of health insurance lies in the financial risk transfer of users’ health risks, while health management focuses on prevention at the source. “The integration of both fundamentally aims to reduce financial expenditures associated with health risks,” she said. “Therefore, preventive services have become the priority in health service development.” 

Chen said Chinese insurance companies are more inclined to spend resources on medical services that can enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales. She said: “They have insufficient investment in preventive healthcare services that take effect slowly, such as critical illness green channels and medical advance payments. These value-added medical services are the mainstream.”

She said the first challenge is that the initial premium cost is the primary concern for customers. The second challenge is that the returns from health management are difficult to quantify. 

Chen then talked about solutions for successful integration, and she had five strategies: include preventative services within the scope of claims reimbursement; implement a medical insurance guarantee for renewal, which can stimulate long-term investment in health; allow the health management company to share the costs and revenues; encourage customers to adopt healthy behaviours; and gain the policy support from the regulatory authorities.

Chen said there is still a long way to go, adding: “While meeting the health protection needs of consumers, allowing both health management service providers and insurance companies to make profits and having a policy implementation mechanism at the national level are the only ways the health management projects of insurance companies can go further.”

Louis Lee, Managing Director, APAC, CoverGo

Lee focused his presentation on AI and travel, and he talked about the evolution of travel insurance.

In the past, most people would buy insurance from their travel agents. There were no websites, you bought from the travel agency.

When insurance was sold online, it was half the price. He said that now aggregators are resourceful, but there’s too much choice. Insurance companies’ margins are low for aggregators, he added, while online travel agents (OTAs) have the customer power. Lee said that FWD – full self-service, direct – is now very important, with a great website, and number two market share in Singapore. HSBC is the largest insurance provider in Hong Kong.

Lee said people think about travel insurance when: 

• Booking flights
• On the way to the airport
• The agent contacts them
• Facebook ad pops up
• During a trip
• Friends have a bad experience.

AI has now become very important. He showed a live example of CoverGo’s tech, and asked TravelGPT for the best policies. You can get very specific with the questions you ask.

Cameron said the new ChatGPT services may be game-changers. Nobody will read 80 pages of an insurance document, but ChatGPT can get down to a granular level so that customers can ask very specific questions about their policies.