Future Health Insurance Plans for Year 2019 and Beyond

According to a Gallup poll that was conducted this past March, health care is at the top of people’s concern. Of the 1,041 adults surveyed, 55 percent said that they worried “a great deal” over the cost and availability of health care, and 23 percent that they worried “a fair amount.” Concern over health care is nothing new; in fact, this is the fifth consecutive year that Americans have ranked health care as a top concern. With all the changes that we’ve seen in recent years, and even more pressing, in recent months, it’s easy to understand why this is the case.

Spotlight

Insurance Quantified

Insurance Quantified is an underwriting technology provider that arms commercial property and casualty insurance carriers and MGAs with the data and analytics they need to grow their business, improve underwriting profitability and be a preferred partner and employer. Backed by Two Sigma, a pioneer and global leader in the financial sciences, we believe that systematically delivering the right data to the right people at the right time through a unified underwriting workbench will enable faster coverage decisions, more agile product innovation and significant risk reduction for all participants in the underwriting value chain. Learn more at insurancequantified.com.

OTHER ARTICLES
Insurance Technology

Digital Transformation in Insurance Industry

Article | July 14, 2022

Insurers of the future will play more of a risk avoidance role and less of a risk mitigation one. The seemingly effective yet simple ideas of Netflix, Uber, Ola, Amazon, and many other ideas have forever transformed their industry segments. Digital transformation in the insurance industry is embraced in various ways to address the complex challenges posed by consumers, regulatory, and digital landscapes. To keep up with insureds' demands, insurers have had to digitize various aspects of their operations. Any company that wants to stay competitive in today's market must meet customers where and when they need it. Insurance's digital transformation, powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, mobile services, live chat, and other technologies, enables insurers to do just that and will continue to change the industry for years. Insurance Companies to Look at Value Chain through a Digital Lens: Gain First-Mover Advantage: Product introduction to gain a potentially sustainable competitive advantage. To achieve the first-mover advantage, the insurer should have two crucial capabilities: the ability to pinpoint unmet customer needs to guide product development and quickly adapt existing products to market forces. Reduce IT costs to fund innovation: When insurance companies refactor monolithic applications into modular micro services, application maintenance costs are reduced. Grow revenue by differentiating the customer journey: Electronic document capture and processing, robotic process automation (RPA), and robo-advisors improve serviceability and help businesses gain a competitive advantage. Despite market participants' claims that the insurance industry was not an early adopter of digital transformation, new players, business models, and demanding customers are forcing the industry to embrace digital technologies. As a result, the global insurance market is expected to grow by 45% between 2022 and 2025. Modern digital engineering does not occur in a vacuum; new products must be compatible with existing technologies and processes. Ascertain that the development team understands legacy insurance applications and the data required to integrate them with new, digitally engineered products.

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Core Insurance, Risk Management

Insurers Are Preparing to Accelerate Growth in 2022

Article | September 22, 2022

Despite ongoing concerns about COVID-19 variants, most insurers anticipate a faster economic recovery and increased investments in digital technology in 2022. One-third of those polled expect revenues to be "significantly higher" next year. The global demand for insurance is expected to rise further. Insurers face a variety of challenges, including economic hurdles such as the possibility of sustained inflation; sustainability concerns such as climate risk, diversity, and financial inclusion; and rapidly changing consumer product and purchase preferences. Attracting (and Retaining) Talent Will Be Critical in a Hybrid Work Environment Future of work considerations have also grown in importance as carriers strive to develop flexible return-to-office strategies while also struggling to retain and recruit high-level talent in a highly competitive job market, particularly for those with advanced technology and data analytics skills. Insurers Must Find a Way to Balance Technological Adoption with the Preservation of the Human Touch Insurers are becoming more reliant on emerging technologies and data sources to increase efficiency, improve cybersecurity, and expand capabilities across the organization. Most, however, should focus on improving the customer experience by streamlining processes with automation and providing customized service where needed and preferred. Opportunities to Increase Stakeholder Trust Have Arisen as a Result of the Pandemic On a more fundamental level, many carriers should consider taking steps to increase stakeholder trust in order to increase retention and profitability. This could be accomplished in part by increasing transparency in how insurers collect and use personal data. They can also become more proactive in seeking comprehensive solutions to large-scale societal issues, such as reducing the financial impact of future pandemics and closing coverage gaps for natural disasters.

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Insurance Technology

Making the digital leap in underwriting

Article | July 20, 2022

Underwriting has historically been one of the most data-intensive areas of insurance. But when it comes to looking at investments and results, data and information handling for underwriting at most carriers is still disjointed and disconnected. This is underwriting’s version of the digital divide we’ve been discussing in this series, and it leads to inefficiencies and ineffective underwriting. The divide exists because today’s underwriting platforms have not evolved to meet the needs of a modern digital carrier. To see why, let’s take a quick look at the history of these platforms. The first generation of underwriting platforms was built to provide rating systems and core policy management needed to price and administer the underwriting of policies. The technology they run on has changed from mainframe to servers to the cloud, but the platforms themselves remain focused on managing the least information necessary to price and maintain the policy.

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Insurance Technology

Emergency Prevention: 3 Ways Insurtech is Leading the Way

Article | July 20, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the pressures on emergency medical services and healthcare professionals as well as insurance platforms. Insurtech has proved to be a robust area of technology that needs further investments to ensure that we are able to leverage it even in times when there’s little global turmoil. The Efma-Accenture Innovations in Insurance award winners have validated the exponential expansion of insurtech. Here are three insurtech innovations driving emergency prevention in healthcare. 1 bAIby – Interpreting Baby Cries bAIby is a next-gen baby monitoring device powered by AI. Labelled as a “cry translator,” the BabyT device uses AI to interpret what a baby’s cries mean. The bAIby solution is based on the understanding that the first six months of a baby’s cries universally communicate the following: sleepiness hunger discomfort stomach issues The developer of the BabyT AI, Zoundream, collaborated with insurance company Generali to enroll young parents and test BabyT. This allowed Zoundream to collect the massive amounts of data sets required to train the AI. The AI is able to detect pathologies like hyperthyroidism, autism and even hearing impairment. Furthermore, it will enable Generali to provide new parents with assistance, prevention, and insurance services, thus providing the peace of mind that insurance services should provide. This innovation won the gold in the Efma-Accenture Innovations in Insurance award. 2 Air Doctor – Finding a Doctor Overseas Silver winner Air Doctor is a cutting edge solution to help individuals find general practitioners in unfamiliar places. The solution is aimed at travellers and expatriates whose first instinct when sick overseas may be to visit a hospital, leading to high medical costs and burdening the local healthcare system. The Air Doctor platform provides access to a network of physicians in six continents and 70 countries. The information includes the doctor’s location, specialization, as well as online appointment booking and virtual care options. Insurance providers can integrate with the platform to connect with their customers by offering a digital link for quick verification and approval. The platform has made managing basic medical attention easier for both consumers and insurance providers. 3 bolttech – Boosting Insurance Penetration Bronze winner bolttech was recognized for its smart insurance exchange ecosystem that enables non-insurers to integrate insurance solutions into their purchase journey. For instance, smartphone vendors can use bolttech to provide insurance as an option during the purchase of a new phone, leveraging the most effective purchase touchpoints to provide coverage. This is especially crucial in markets that have a low penetration of insurance. bolttech’s platform has medical plans with self-declared underwriting, delivering instant cover and reducing the onboarding time to just 90 seconds. 4 The Way Forward Digitalization of insurance is the future of the industry. The above solutions have proven use cases that enable both consumers and providers to leverage digital network to create secure and stress-free access to insurance.

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Spotlight

Insurance Quantified

Insurance Quantified is an underwriting technology provider that arms commercial property and casualty insurance carriers and MGAs with the data and analytics they need to grow their business, improve underwriting profitability and be a preferred partner and employer. Backed by Two Sigma, a pioneer and global leader in the financial sciences, we believe that systematically delivering the right data to the right people at the right time through a unified underwriting workbench will enable faster coverage decisions, more agile product innovation and significant risk reduction for all participants in the underwriting value chain. Learn more at insurancequantified.com.

Related News

Insurance Technology

AgentSync Launches API to Streamline Insurance Producer Onboarding and Compliance

PR Newswire | January 29, 2024

AgentSync today announced the launch of its first commercially available ProducerSync API for carriers, MGAs, and agencies to manage producer and adjuster licensing and appointment validation without the paperwork. The ProducerSync application programming interface (API) acts as a menu, allowing insurance businesses to draw from a selection of National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) data on licensing, appointing, and personal information for producers. AgentSync humanizes and contextualizes the data so end users have actionable information from the industry source of truth without hours of manual research. "ProducerSync API represents a key step in our long-term strategic vision. By streaming accurate and comprehensive data to our customers' existing systems, ProducerSync API drives better business decisions," said Jenn Knight, Co-Founder and CTO of AgentSync. "We're focused on building modern technology that unlocks value for our customers, and highly flexible and adaptable products like ProducerSync API do exactly that by leveraging current data for better all-around business outcomes." The ProducerSync API uses REST API architecture, making it lightweight, scalable, and flexible, and is the first of AgentSync's planned suite of APIs to be available to the wider insurance market. It joins a family of modern business solutions the company uses to connect the industry. "Our first product, Manage, has had strong customer adoption by delivering superior business data with a modern user interface and comprehensive features for compliance and producer management," said Knight. "ProducerSync API builds on this vision, giving customers programmatic access to NIPR data elements in a way that is highly modular and reusable for a variety of use cases." Insurance runs on data, but maintaining the accuracy and quality of producer data across ecosystems is, historically, a challenge for all stripes of insurance organizations. With ProducerSync API, users can have confidence in their data while reducing maintenance, driving down business risks, enabling better-informed decisions, and eliminating inefficiencies with a scaled, secure solution. About AgentSync AgentSync builds modern insurance infrastructure that connects carriers, agencies, MGAs, and producers. With customer-centric design, seamless APIs, automation, and unparalleled service, AgentSync's solutions provide data intelligence and streamlined onboarding and compliance management processes that reduce costs, increase efficiency, and get producers ready to sell in hours instead of weeks. Founded in 2018 by Niranjan "Niji" Sabharwal and Jenn Knight, and headquartered in Denver, CO, AgentSync has been recognized as one of Denver's Best Places to Work, a Forbes Magazine Cloud 100 Rising Star, and as an Insurtech Insights Future 50 winner, and was ranked 65 in Forbes – America's Best Startup Employers 2023.

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Insurance Technology

Ladder and Envestnet | MoneyGuide Announce Integration to Provide More Advisors Digital Access to Term Life Insurance Offerings

PR Newswire | January 29, 2024

Today at the T3 Technology Conference, Ladder, the insurtech offering digital, flexible life insurance in minutes announced an integration with Envestnet | MoneyGuide, a leading financial planning software company serving over 107,000 financial advisors. This will empower more financial advisors with the capabilities to provide clients with term life insurance issued by reputable insurers. With this partnership, financial advisors utilizing Envestnet I MoneyGuide Elite's Advanced Lifetime Protection tool will be able to offer their clients digital, convenient, and affordable term life insurance. Financial advisors will be able to estimate clients' coverage needs, generate a quote, and send clients a link to apply—all from within the Envestnet | MoneyGuide platform. MoneyGuide's Advanced Lifetime Protection tool is designed to illustrate how a clients' protection needs can change over time. This tool may help advisors identify an opportunity to improve a client's probability of successfully achieving the goals in their client's financial plan. "Life insurance is a critical piece of a comprehensive financial plan," says Mike Izakov, Head of Financial Institution Partnerships at Ladder. "We believe MoneyGuide has the most robust planning tool in the industry, and we're excited to make it even easier for advisors to get clients the coverage their plans call for." With Ladder's industry-leading digital capabilities and proprietary flexible coverage (i.e. "laddering"), advisors using Envestnet | MoneyGuide will be able to utilize a visualization showcasing how a strategically laddered Ladder policy may save clients up to 40%* over a 30-year term compared to traditional term coverage. "Envestnet's generational research shows that a surprising 50% of Baby Boomers are not formally organizing their long-term finances," said Rose Palazzo, Group President of Envestnet Financial Planning. "Through our partnership with Ladder, our advisors are better equipped to help their clients take action on organizing their financial plans, including the important step of seeking to secure their financial futures through life insurance coverage. Ladder provides our advisors with digital access to term life insurance products, with an integration built right into our protection planning solution." Ladder offers term life insurance for coverage between $100,000 and $8 million, for terms ranging from 10 to 30 years. There are no medical exams required for coverage up to $3 million, just questions about an applicant's health are asked. The pricing is fully underwritten and backed by reputable carriers. Ladder offers a variety of partnership and compensation models to meet the needs of fee-based and insurance-licensed financial advisors. About Ladder Ladder is the first full-stack, digital life insurance company offering flexible online term coverage in minutes that can save policyholders up to 40%* by adjusting their coverage as their life changes. Ladder uses real-time underwriting to make life insurance as accessible, affordable, and beloved as it should be. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and offers coverage up to $8M with no hidden fees. ABOUT ENVESTNET Envestnet is transforming the way financial advice is delivered through an ecosystem of technology, solutions, and intelligence. By establishing the connections between people's daily financial decisions and long-term financial goals, Envestnet empowers them to make better sense of their finances and live an Intelligent Financial Life. With more than $5.4 trillion in platform assets—more than 107,000 advisors, 16 of the 20 largest U.S. banks, 48 of the 50 largest wealth management and brokerage firms, more than 500 of the largest RIAs, and thousands of companies, depend on Envestnet technology and services to help drive better outcomes for their businesses and for their clients.

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Core Insurance

Inszone Insurance Services Continues Expansion in Colorado with the Acquisition of High Desert Insurance

Business Wire | January 29, 2024

Inszone Insurance Services, a rapidly growing national provider of commercial, personal, and benefits insurance, is pleased to announce its recent acquisition of High Desert Insurance, out of Pueblo, Colorado. High Desert Insurance, born in 2011, has been a trusted insurance go-to for over ten years. Starting with three employees, they've grown into a team of seven, always coming through with top-notch insurance solutions for individuals and businesses. The values of High Desert Insurance mesh perfectly with what Inszone Insurance is all about, making this acquisition a great fit as Inszone looks to grow its services in Colorado. "We are delighted to welcome High Desert Insurance to the Inszone family," expressed Chris Walters, CEO of Inszone Insurance Services. "With a decade-long track record of delivering outstanding outcomes for its clients, High Desert Insurance has built a commendable legacy. Our commitment extends to preserving and enhancing this legacy by offering comprehensive back-office support and access to additional markets to the High Desert team." The newly acquired High Desert Insurance will operate under the Inszone Insurance brand and maintain its existing Pueblo, Colorado, location, ensuring a seamless transition and consistency in service for its valued clients. Inszone Insurance is dedicated to retaining the experienced team from High Desert Insurance to ensure the continuation of the high-quality service that clients have come to expect. As Inszone Insurance continues its strategic growth, the acquisition of High Desert Insurance represents not only a significant expansion but also a blending of values, reinforcing the commitment to excellence in service within the dynamic landscape of Colorado. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Sacramento, California, Inszone is a full-service insurance brokerage firm that provides a broad array of property & casualty insurance and employee benefits solutions. With a strong, experienced management team, Inszone continues to grow organically and through acquisitions. With 54 locations across California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington, the company is looking to expand further throughout the United States.

Read More

Insurance Technology

AgentSync Launches API to Streamline Insurance Producer Onboarding and Compliance

PR Newswire | January 29, 2024

AgentSync today announced the launch of its first commercially available ProducerSync API for carriers, MGAs, and agencies to manage producer and adjuster licensing and appointment validation without the paperwork. The ProducerSync application programming interface (API) acts as a menu, allowing insurance businesses to draw from a selection of National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) data on licensing, appointing, and personal information for producers. AgentSync humanizes and contextualizes the data so end users have actionable information from the industry source of truth without hours of manual research. "ProducerSync API represents a key step in our long-term strategic vision. By streaming accurate and comprehensive data to our customers' existing systems, ProducerSync API drives better business decisions," said Jenn Knight, Co-Founder and CTO of AgentSync. "We're focused on building modern technology that unlocks value for our customers, and highly flexible and adaptable products like ProducerSync API do exactly that by leveraging current data for better all-around business outcomes." The ProducerSync API uses REST API architecture, making it lightweight, scalable, and flexible, and is the first of AgentSync's planned suite of APIs to be available to the wider insurance market. It joins a family of modern business solutions the company uses to connect the industry. "Our first product, Manage, has had strong customer adoption by delivering superior business data with a modern user interface and comprehensive features for compliance and producer management," said Knight. "ProducerSync API builds on this vision, giving customers programmatic access to NIPR data elements in a way that is highly modular and reusable for a variety of use cases." Insurance runs on data, but maintaining the accuracy and quality of producer data across ecosystems is, historically, a challenge for all stripes of insurance organizations. With ProducerSync API, users can have confidence in their data while reducing maintenance, driving down business risks, enabling better-informed decisions, and eliminating inefficiencies with a scaled, secure solution. About AgentSync AgentSync builds modern insurance infrastructure that connects carriers, agencies, MGAs, and producers. With customer-centric design, seamless APIs, automation, and unparalleled service, AgentSync's solutions provide data intelligence and streamlined onboarding and compliance management processes that reduce costs, increase efficiency, and get producers ready to sell in hours instead of weeks. Founded in 2018 by Niranjan "Niji" Sabharwal and Jenn Knight, and headquartered in Denver, CO, AgentSync has been recognized as one of Denver's Best Places to Work, a Forbes Magazine Cloud 100 Rising Star, and as an Insurtech Insights Future 50 winner, and was ranked 65 in Forbes – America's Best Startup Employers 2023.

Read More

Insurance Technology

Ladder and Envestnet | MoneyGuide Announce Integration to Provide More Advisors Digital Access to Term Life Insurance Offerings

PR Newswire | January 29, 2024

Today at the T3 Technology Conference, Ladder, the insurtech offering digital, flexible life insurance in minutes announced an integration with Envestnet | MoneyGuide, a leading financial planning software company serving over 107,000 financial advisors. This will empower more financial advisors with the capabilities to provide clients with term life insurance issued by reputable insurers. With this partnership, financial advisors utilizing Envestnet I MoneyGuide Elite's Advanced Lifetime Protection tool will be able to offer their clients digital, convenient, and affordable term life insurance. Financial advisors will be able to estimate clients' coverage needs, generate a quote, and send clients a link to apply—all from within the Envestnet | MoneyGuide platform. MoneyGuide's Advanced Lifetime Protection tool is designed to illustrate how a clients' protection needs can change over time. This tool may help advisors identify an opportunity to improve a client's probability of successfully achieving the goals in their client's financial plan. "Life insurance is a critical piece of a comprehensive financial plan," says Mike Izakov, Head of Financial Institution Partnerships at Ladder. "We believe MoneyGuide has the most robust planning tool in the industry, and we're excited to make it even easier for advisors to get clients the coverage their plans call for." With Ladder's industry-leading digital capabilities and proprietary flexible coverage (i.e. "laddering"), advisors using Envestnet | MoneyGuide will be able to utilize a visualization showcasing how a strategically laddered Ladder policy may save clients up to 40%* over a 30-year term compared to traditional term coverage. "Envestnet's generational research shows that a surprising 50% of Baby Boomers are not formally organizing their long-term finances," said Rose Palazzo, Group President of Envestnet Financial Planning. "Through our partnership with Ladder, our advisors are better equipped to help their clients take action on organizing their financial plans, including the important step of seeking to secure their financial futures through life insurance coverage. Ladder provides our advisors with digital access to term life insurance products, with an integration built right into our protection planning solution." Ladder offers term life insurance for coverage between $100,000 and $8 million, for terms ranging from 10 to 30 years. There are no medical exams required for coverage up to $3 million, just questions about an applicant's health are asked. The pricing is fully underwritten and backed by reputable carriers. Ladder offers a variety of partnership and compensation models to meet the needs of fee-based and insurance-licensed financial advisors. About Ladder Ladder is the first full-stack, digital life insurance company offering flexible online term coverage in minutes that can save policyholders up to 40%* by adjusting their coverage as their life changes. Ladder uses real-time underwriting to make life insurance as accessible, affordable, and beloved as it should be. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and offers coverage up to $8M with no hidden fees. ABOUT ENVESTNET Envestnet is transforming the way financial advice is delivered through an ecosystem of technology, solutions, and intelligence. By establishing the connections between people's daily financial decisions and long-term financial goals, Envestnet empowers them to make better sense of their finances and live an Intelligent Financial Life. With more than $5.4 trillion in platform assets—more than 107,000 advisors, 16 of the 20 largest U.S. banks, 48 of the 50 largest wealth management and brokerage firms, more than 500 of the largest RIAs, and thousands of companies, depend on Envestnet technology and services to help drive better outcomes for their businesses and for their clients.

Read More

Core Insurance

Inszone Insurance Services Continues Expansion in Colorado with the Acquisition of High Desert Insurance

Business Wire | January 29, 2024

Inszone Insurance Services, a rapidly growing national provider of commercial, personal, and benefits insurance, is pleased to announce its recent acquisition of High Desert Insurance, out of Pueblo, Colorado. High Desert Insurance, born in 2011, has been a trusted insurance go-to for over ten years. Starting with three employees, they've grown into a team of seven, always coming through with top-notch insurance solutions for individuals and businesses. The values of High Desert Insurance mesh perfectly with what Inszone Insurance is all about, making this acquisition a great fit as Inszone looks to grow its services in Colorado. "We are delighted to welcome High Desert Insurance to the Inszone family," expressed Chris Walters, CEO of Inszone Insurance Services. "With a decade-long track record of delivering outstanding outcomes for its clients, High Desert Insurance has built a commendable legacy. Our commitment extends to preserving and enhancing this legacy by offering comprehensive back-office support and access to additional markets to the High Desert team." The newly acquired High Desert Insurance will operate under the Inszone Insurance brand and maintain its existing Pueblo, Colorado, location, ensuring a seamless transition and consistency in service for its valued clients. Inszone Insurance is dedicated to retaining the experienced team from High Desert Insurance to ensure the continuation of the high-quality service that clients have come to expect. As Inszone Insurance continues its strategic growth, the acquisition of High Desert Insurance represents not only a significant expansion but also a blending of values, reinforcing the commitment to excellence in service within the dynamic landscape of Colorado. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Sacramento, California, Inszone is a full-service insurance brokerage firm that provides a broad array of property & casualty insurance and employee benefits solutions. With a strong, experienced management team, Inszone continues to grow organically and through acquisitions. With 54 locations across California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington, the company is looking to expand further throughout the United States.

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