Online sales of health insurance to grow 15-20 times by 2020: Study

The FICCI-QuintilesIMS study was commissioned in order to identify the appropriate roadmap for all stakeholders involved digitisation across health insurance industry. 

“Health insurance is an important component of the healthcare delivery ecosystem wherein digitisation becomes mandatory for enhancing the overall patient care and experience. At present only one-fifth of the population is covered with some form of health insurance. This suggests that huge potential for growth is available for the healthcare insurance industry. Digitisation presents many opportunities for health insurers. For instance, it helps in expanding reach, improves market share, and helps in providing additional value to customers,” stated G Srinivasan, chair, FICCI Health, Insurance Committee & CMD, The New India Assurance.

“In India, insurers have taken steps to incorporate digitisation into their business models, but adoption has been sluggish due to many challenges in the path. Through this study, our effort has been to draw out a realistic phase-wise approach wherein all stakeholders could collaborate to counter the challenges faced and implement innovative technologies to create a strong digital healthcare ecosystem for India,” explained Amit Mookim, general manager, South Asia, QuintilesIMS.

He added, “Health insurance is an important component of the healthcare delivery ecosystem wherein digitisation becomes mandatory for enhancing the overall patient care and experience. At present only one-fifth of the population is covered with some form of health insurance. This suggests that huge potential for growth is available for the healthcare insurance industry. Digitisation presents many opportunities for health insurers. For instance, it helps in expanding reach, improves market share, and helps in providing additional value to customers.”

According to Malti Jaisawal, COO, Health Insurance TPA of India, most of the digital initiatives across health insurance market are being undertaken across sales and marketing and policy administration as it requires low degree of support from stakeholders across the value chain. For example, in online sale of policies, other stakeholders like providers, doctors and TPAs have minimal involvement. However, she added, cross stakeholder collaboration would be critical in most of the other initiatives to drive digitisation across health insurance.