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Insurtech: The next big buzzword in insurance?

You’ve probably heard of the word “insurtech” at some point, but what does it mean? This portmanteau of “insurance” and “technology” is a recent buzzword that describes how insurers are revolutionizing the insurance industry with disruptive technology to improve and grow their offerings. Since technology took central precedence in the Chinese government’s 2013 reforms, the insurtech sector continues to flourish, with sales that could reach over US $60 billion by 2018. This article highlights some of the major trends in insurtech and what this could mean for the future of insurance in China.

Are insurers utilizing technology?

There is little doubt that insurtech is nothing short of disruptive, but before we look into some popular examples of how the industry is leveraging technology it would first be a good idea to look into what exactly health insurers are doing and their view on technology.

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Historically, health insurers have been a little slow to uptake technology but this is starting to change as we found in our Top International Private Medical Insurance Trends report released in early 2016. As we found in our report, health insurers are increasingly implementing three technological elements:

  • Portals
  • Mobile apps
  • Claims and plan data

It is clear that insurtech is certainly having an impact on the health insurance providers we work with, but there is still a long way to go in terms of catching up with other industries. Below are some interesting new insurtech elements that the industry is starting to look into leveraging.

Integrating wearable technology and health insurance

Wearable technology is huge in China, with over 9.5 million wearables sold between April and June 2016 alone. These Internet connected devices not only help you track your fitness and sleep patterns, etc., but they also gather large amounts of real-time data. This presents many new opportunities for insurers to adapt and create new offerings so that they are more personalized and flexible. Some insurance companies have even begun to offer discounts and other benefits to encourage people to share their wearable data.

Complementing underwriting data with wearables

Despite its growing popularity, the widespread adoption and integration of wearable devices by the insurance sector is still in its early days. However, essential data collected from these devices is increasingly being used to complement underwriting data.

For example, with a fitness tracker you can more easily identify what kind of lifestyle improvements you will likely need to make in order to adopt a more healthy lifestyle. If you’re committed to these lifestyle improvements, for example if you show that you have a good track record of exercising as well as having adequate sleep, this information could eventually be used to negotiate lower premiums, especially after a few years of solid results.

Tackling new risks with cyber insurance

According to China Daily Asia, China sees an astounding US $60 billion in cyber losses annually, with more than 8 million servers hijacked within the past 2 years. Cybercrime continues to dominate headlines in the country as hackers become increasingly sophisticated.

As such, a new type of insurance, named cyber insurance, has emerged to tackle these cyber risks. Cyber insurance protects policyholders from liabilities incurred as a result of private data being lost or leaked to the public, and also protects them from cyber attacks and hacks by arranging the funding needed to cover cybercrime losses.

The future of consumer cyber protection

Although this type of insurance tends to be more popular for organizations looking to protect their data, we predict that more homeowner’s insurance policies will include this type of coverage for consumer cyber protection. By offering security audits, insurers will be able to check whether or not sensitive data (e.g. banking details) stored in your computer and in your mobile devices are truly secure and hack-proof.

Other emerging forms of insurance

As the insurance sector continues to be influenced by technological innovation, new forms of insurance offering more personalized services are beginning to emerge. Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, WeChat, and Tencent have been quick to notice this trend as they continue to compete for market share in emerging forms of online insurance platforms.

With technology, insurance companies are also able to pinpoint opportunities to develop new types of insurance, some even capitalizing on protecting policyholders against social risks such as divorce. As providers begin to find new, more sophisticated ways of analyzing and gathering consumer data, we predict that services offered by providers will continue to be more flexible and tailored to the individual.

To learn more about your insurance options, visit Pacific Prime China today.

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Disclaimer: Pacific Prime China solely represents, operates and manages locally regulated insurance products and services in the territory of PR China. Any references to Pacific Prime Global Company or Group, the international services, insurance products or otherwise stated written or verbally, is for introduction purposes about our overseas network only as each entity is fully independent.